Premiere November 23rd 1995 at Teatro Pradillo, Madrid, Spain. Duration: 45min Written and Directed: La Ribot. Performers: Juan Loriente, La Ribot. Lighting Design & Stopwatch: Daniel Demont. Costumes: La Ribot. Music: Javier Lopez de Guereña.Premiere November 23rd 1995 at Teatro Pradillo, Madrid, Spain. Duration: 45min Written and Directed: La Ribot. Performers: Juan Loriente, La Ribot. Lighting Design & Stopwatch: Daniel Demont. Costumes: La Ribot. Music: Javier Lopez de Guereña.
Show/ Dance/ Theater
The deliberately audience-unfriendly performance Oh! Sole!, 1995, features La Ribot and the actor Juan Loriente and partly stands as proof of La Ribot’s deep resistance to easy solutions: it’s a work designed to test her audience’s patience to the limit.
Performing in glowing scarlet costumes and (in Loriente’s case) a very obvious blond wig, Ribot and Loriente’s appearance is grandiose, incongruous and ridiculous, and thus pretty much in keeping with the general mood of the production. Operatically bellowing the popular standard O Sole Mio! at one another at full volume, the pair roll on the floor, engage in parodies of romantic pas-de-deux and mime their way through sequences of exaggerated yet incomprehensible gestures. At times their raucous theatrics gives way to longueurs involving banal activities such as crocheting, drinking water or attending to a bleeping alarm clock. At one point Loriente acts out an implausibly lengthy stage death while, seated on a chair a few feet away, La Ribot impassively works at her crochet, indifferent to his simulated agonies.
Oh! Sole! may be a fairly abrasive theatrical experience, but it is also perversely comic – even exhilarating – to witness. The contradiction between the apparently hollow melodrama being rendered on stage and the significant effort the performers are investing in the process, makes the piece an intriguing, and at times very entertaining, puzzle.