Lopez Rubio's Alberto: Character Revelation and Form

LOPEZ RUBIO'S ALBERTO: CHARACTER REVELATION AND FORM THEATRICAL ACTIVITY IN SPAIN REMAINED CURTAILED DURING the decade that followed the end of the -civil war in 1939. The finest of the younger dramatists, Federico Garcia Lorca, had been killed; the promising talent of Alejandro Casona was lost to the nation through exile. The aging Benavente continued to produce new plays of no exceptional interest, and several playwrights who had begun to write for the stage before or during the period of the republic l'esumed their careers. But the unfortunate state of the national economy, the imposed censorship, and the fear of any expression that might lend itself to unfavorable ideological interpretation were almost insurmountable obstacles to experimentation in form or the presentation of provocative themes. It was not until 1949 that signs of a new vitality could be discerned . In October of that year, the premiere of Historia de una escalera introduced a young dramatist, Antonio Buero Vallejo, who was to establish himself within a few years as the finest dramatic talent of the contemporary Spanish theater. In April of 1949, Jose Lopez Rubio, whose creative abilities had been demonstrated in two plays in 1929 and 1930, rejoined the ranks of Spanish playwrights after a long period during which he had written and directed for motion pictures both in Spain and in America. Just as Buero's first play marks the rebirth of serious drama in Spain, Lopez Rubio's Alberto represents the renewal of the intellectual comedy in the Spanish theater. Along with Victor Ruiz Iriarte, Miguel Mihura, and a few less prolific writers, Lopez Rubio has created a type of theater that is sometimes delicate and poetical and other times satirical or ironic, but always composed with a remarkable instinct for theatrical effect. The setting of A Iberto is a Madrid pension. In the first act a crisis has been brought on by the imminent departure of Dona Elena, the director of the establishment, who intends to go to South America to join a man she has loved in her memory for some thirty years. Without her guiding hand, the several individuals who have found in her house an agreeable haven from some of the annoying complexities of modern life will be forced to re-establish themselves and dissolve their present relationships. To avoid the breakup, they decide to invent an imaginary personality to direct their affairs. Each 144 1967 LOPEZ RUBIO'S Alberto 145 of them will continue to make his financial contribution. The new director is given the name "Alberto," and his creators eagerly set about elaborating on their fantasy. In writing this play, L6pez Rubio assumed the difficult job of developing credible ·characterizations for a group of personages who are subscribing to an illusion. In the first act he succeeded marvelously. Structurally the act is far more complex than any of the scenes which the playwright had attempted in his two early works. The entire menage of Dona Elena's pension is presented with consummate skill in a type of dramatic "orchestration" that affords each character his own harmonious expression in the whole. This act, which might well be called the "prologue" of Alberto) remains one of L6pez Rubio's prime achievements. The characters represent several ages and social stations. Dona Elena is a middle-aged woman of sentimental nature who harbors the illusion that she may be able to recapture the lost love of her youth. She remains, however, the least credible of the play's characters because she is absent in the crucial second act and seems almost an intruder when she reappears in the final act. The first of the boarders introduced is Leticia, a young stenographer with a tendency to speak figuratively and to be carried away by her own sense of the poetical. It is she who actually conceives the plan of inventing Alberto. The antithesis of Leticia is Dona Sofia, an utterly literal-minded woman of sixty-four who is accompanied by her overly sheltered daughter, Elvira. The most forceful of the group is the old Marquesa, who maintains a browbeaten companion named Dona Rosalia. The male contingent is composed of two older men: the loquacious Don Jose...