Where It's Technically a Comedy

Comedia Famosa De La Verdad Sospechosa/ Famous Comedy of the Suspicious Truth by Juan Ruizde Alarcon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This early Seventeenth century play by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, the inspiration for a number of similar plays in other languages, is witty and moderately entertaining, but not super fun. It's alright. I wouldn't really want to see it performed.

It's the story of a young man returning to Madrid after finishing his schooling, and he seems like a young gentleman at first to us and to his father, but moments later is revealed as a wild liar. He tells complex lies for no good reason, and pretty soon has himself tangled up in them. His father is horrified and furious, a rival for the love of a beautiful woman is ready to duel with him, and the woman of his dreams, who was ready to fall for him, discovers he can't be trusted.

In English translation, it's hard to tell whether or not it would come off as comedic. A couple scenes have that feeling, but mostly it feels moral and didactic from beginning to end. You hope the young man will learn his lesson and redeem himself, but [400-year-old spoiler] he doesn't, and goes to the end unrepentant. Oddly enough, he ends up with a beautiful woman, just not the one he was aiming for, so I guess it's a feel-good screwball comedy, but there's no way he deserved the woman. I feel bad for her. He's gonna keep lying.

I'm curious about some of the speeches and how they would appear on the stage. Many of them are crazy long. They speak in paragraphs as a rule throughout the play, but some of the speeches are several hundred words long, and one of them--a particularly involved lie--is over 1000 words. it's the longest I remember seeing in theater. I'm afraid they would turn out dull, but it may be that, staged and delivered properly, they are funny. Probably just depends on the director and the tone they go for.

Anyway, the play doesn't much speak to me, but it is interesting in its own way. I could probably be talked around on it.

View all my reviews