When Ken Follett wrote The pillars of the earthlittle did he know that his story would sell nearly 200 million copies and become one of the best-selling books in history. Nor did I imagine that it would adapt to radio, television and the world of video games. But if there is something that he could not suspect, even with his novel already becoming a worldwide phenomenon, it was sitting in the middle of the scenery that recreates his world in a musical show. And his fable, set in the 12th century and with a plot that mixes feudal violence with power conflicts between nobility and the Church, has as its centerpiece the construction of an enormous cathedral that is destroyed in the middle of history and is destroyed. build again. “It seemed crazy to me that they did this. “I’m sitting here, seeing everything done, and I think: ‘Did I really write this?'” Follett said this Tuesday in the middle of the pillars with religious figures and the wooden beams that frame the first musical adaptation in the world of The pillars of the eartha Beon Entertainment production that premieres this Wednesday at the EDP theater on Madrid’s Gran Vía.
It was as unthinkable for Follett as it was for Federico Barrios that a “crazy man,” the producer Darío Regattieri, invited him to direct the work. “It is a very big challenge when you do a project like this, a novel so long and so internalized in people’s minds, maintaining its essence,” says Barrios. Beyond how to materialize the construction of the cathedral, the show had to summarize the almost 1,000 pages of the novel and the 47 years of history that occur in them, in two and a half hours of theater. The creative team had decided to take a risk with the construction of their particular cathedral: a musical from scratch, an original proposal, not very common on the musical billboard in Madrid, full of Broadway replicas. And this, like the English writer’s cathedral, also had its own particular collapse.
Darío Regattieri is everything you expect when you think of a musical theater producer. His head is going 1,000 kilometers per hour and it shows. “First of all, can I take your bag?” he says with the bag—more like a backpack—already in hand, upon receiving the journalist in a cafeteria last week. “Let me put her in the chair, otherwise the money goes away,” he continues, with a foreign accent (born in Switzerland to Italian parents). And he finishes his welcome phrase: “The bags are never put on the ground.” He is the one in charge of paying the bills at the end of the month and the one who invested more than four million euros to create the show. When he talks about money, he seems to know it more than anyone else. “The truth is that we are crazy. We went into the lion’s den. Making a production like this is not difficult, no. “It’s what comes next,” he says. From him and Iván Macías, the composer of the musical, the idea of staging the novel arose in 2017. An idea that, at first, did not receive the approval of the author.
“He didn’t know us,” says Macías. “We went to ask and received what we expected, a no.” But the refusal did not stop him from starting the work. On the contrary, he encouraged it: “I started composing and working for hours and then we came back, with the proposal much more grounded and with a large part of the music done.” From that work, even without knowing if it would be performed on stage, more than a dozen songs came out, now recorded with an orchestra and which, starting this Wednesday, will be performed by seven musicians live. This is how the composer summarizes his creative process: “What I do is do a very deep reading of the text and identify the emotions of the characters. I try to feel what the author felt when writing the text and what the readers feel when reading it. The next step is to stay with the emotions, remove the words and transfer those emotions to music. From there the dramaturgy is made.” And that music is the basis of the show. Follett accepted after the second contact. “I think he understood that we were very respectful of his work. He heard the music and immediately connected with the project. “He saw truth and respect,” says Macías.
Félix Amador added lyrics to the music, also in charge of controlling the duration of the show without losing the essence of the dramaturgy. A challenge that, as he explains, increased because “there is not just one protagonist, but seven. And many other important characters.” His secret to achieving it: focusing on the characters and their stories. With the dramaturgy ready, the work was scheduled to premiere in 2020. But the symbolic cathedral that they were building, already in advanced works, saw its roof destroyed with the arrival of the pandemic.
“We closed and put everything back, waiting for better times,” says the producer. Later, Beon, with the health restrictions over, decided to put on another musical, with a smaller budget and easier to make: The doctoralso an adaptation of another best seller namesake, this one by Noah Gordon. Reflection of a particular taste that the production company has for original productions. “We want to be exporters,” says Regattieri. This year, seven after work began on The pillars of the earthproduction finally began to materialize. But the main mystery, what aroused the most doubts at the beginning, remained unresolved: how is a cathedral built on stage?
Ricardo S. Cuerda, the set designer in charge of the show, is clear: “It is impossible to build a cathedral in a theater.” But it also offers a solution. “It has to be done with symbolic elements that maintain the emotion that this construction generates,” he says. But their work, beyond the creative solution to overcome that challenge, involves much more. “Everyone talks about the cathedral, but much more happens. There are fights, the coronation of a king, markets, castles, much more,” says Cuerda. Its scenography is not only reflected in the stage box, but also goes out into the stalls. He has converted the entire room into a 12th century construction, also using 360º technology that, with projections on the walls, contributes to the creation of the environment.
From the Gothic cathedral, what has materialized in the EDP theater is a large multicolored rose window that starts a “Oh, wow” by Ken Follett upon seeing it. The previously skeptical writer, still without seeing the show, already makes the first assessment: “It is a great moment for me, it is a testimony of the story I have written, the confirmation that it can be transformed into a completely different medium. But it is still my story, it has touched my heart.” But the inevitable uncertainty that comes with a new production like this has not yet abandoned the creative team. “Scary, yes. And also in the world of musicals it happens that, if it is successful, it is thanks to the production, and if not, it is the director’s fault,” reflects Federico Barrios. His producer shares the uncertainty: “We don’t know how people are going to react, that’s just how it is. And in this, desire and work are not enough, you have to have an economic return.” That does not prevent, however, his producer’s mind from thinking about the future before knowing what will happen. “I’m telling you from now on, we want to export this product. Our goal is to get to Broadway and we will achieve it,” he assures.