Any large city in Europe or North America could be the setting for Brad Fraser's Unidentified Human Remains And The True Nature of Love. His seven characters use clipped speech, and the short scenes effectively characterize the pace of contemporary urban life. Even more telling are their fragmented relationships that substitute for love and affection. Actor/waiter David (partially autobiographical on Fraser's part) yearns for something more than quick sex. When fellow waiter Kane, a young admirer, brings up David's juvenile tv appearances, the older David shows disdain followed by satisfaction at playing mentor.
Copy editor Candy shares an apartment with David. After she beds, in turn, female gymnast Jerri and boyfriend Robert, her identity crisis deepens. David's longtime buddy Bernie substitutes intermittent violence for attempts at intimacy. Benita, Cassandra-like clairvoyant and dominatrix-for-hire, is the only one who seems capable of fostering less than superficial interactions. In the background, copying true incidents in 1980s Edmonton, a serial killer is raping and murdering young women.
Fraser meant to provoke, but the characters' concerns (not to speak of the technology limited to answering machines) seemed dated. One of the outcomes of the AIDS crisis has been a reluctance in theater and film to portray promiscuity, either gay (David) or straight (Candy). Young people in the new millennium are still disaffected, but their outlets have changed since the play premiered in 1989. Fraser's screenplay for master director Dennys Arcand ("Love & Human Remains," 1993) better exploited the cinematographic side of the earlier script and continues to interest.
Director Manuel Dueso plunges head-on into the Fraser's abrupt, often violent discontinuities. There is minimal time for characterization, but Dueso effectively shows a world quite unfamiliar to the Barcelona audience. David Martinez's Catalan translation conveys the familiar tone of the English original, but at times it's a bit forced. David Selvas exploits David's monologues to the fullest. His portrayal of the mercurial young man has most authenticity when David's vulnerable side comes out. Montse German seems rather opaque as Candy, a character that should be more than a foil for David. Most interesting are their three paramours, Oriol Vila (a fresh, lively Kane), Rafa Cruz (a handsome Robert) and Anabel Moreno, as the bubbly lesbian Jerri. Carme Gonzalez shows off her varied training as the interesting psychic who's the only one to truly understand David. Manel Sans disappoints as a flat Bernie; he should at least show complex psychology.
Most of the tech cast have worked with Dueso before. Set designer Xavi Garcia with assistant Marina Vives create a unit set that efficiently suggests fast-changing locales when a minimum of props are carried onstage. A low platform on the left becomes David's bedroom, while Benita presides from a raised area on the right. In the middle, a three-level tower becomes alternately David and Candy's apartment entrance, an outdoors hangout for David and Kane, and Bernie's jumping off point when he commits suicide. (The latter is emblematically suggested by dropping his jacket to the ground.) Laia Oms' lighting also aids the quick scene changes.
Mercat de les Flors company performs in the restructured former flower market at the foot of Monjuic, site of the principal venues in the 1992 summer olympics. Other theaters specializing in experimental works will be relocating nearby in the coming years. L'Institut del Teatre, the principal school for actors and theater tech personnel, recently opened its new headquarters next to Mercat de les Flors.
