Great diva stages comeback to Av. Corrientes in tailor-made, glittering comédie brillante
Model-turned-actress-TV host Susana Giménez (b. 1944) must have experienced all the transformations of the Argentine scene since her early screen début in the early 1960s (En mi casa mando yo, 1968) through her successful reinvention as a glittering stage musical star (Woman of the Year, Sugar, The Unsinkable Molly Brown) in the early to late 1980s, and her unstoppable turn as host of the Raffaella Carrá-inspired TV game and entertainment programme Hola, Susana!
Susana Giménez’s rise to stardom began on an epoch-making TV commercial for a soap brand and the Shock! she yelled turning her head back to the camera while douching in smooth lather.
The commercial, shot in Argentina and broadcast all over Latin America in 1972, forever sealed Ms. Giménez’s status as the ultimate pinup, so winsome and homely that her almost completely nude image was deemed chaste, unoffending, thus making it past the censors’ watchful eyes.
Maybe she was not aware of this there and then (how could she predict it?), but TV was to turn her into Argentina ’s biggest diva, a beautiful brunette turned platinum blonde whose touch sufficed to turn everything into gold.
After a 24-year-absence from the stage, Ms. Giménez made headline news in the entertainment biz late last year when she announced that, at age 71, she was willing to tackle the challenge of returning to the stage. Her comeback vehicle was Jean Pierre Gredy and Pierre Barillet’s comédie blanche Peau de vache, fittingly rendered in Spanish as Piel de Judas in Fernando Masllorens and Federico González del Pino’s translation-transposition.
The new version of Piel de Judas started to make waves here even before preproduction and rehearsals started. Only the cast surrounding Giménez was made known — subject to change, of course. The only category not subject to any last-minute replacement was actor-director Arturo Puig, Ms. Giménez’s partner on her glittering musicals on Av. Corrientes theatres, and now a respected director since manoeuvering the stage version of the French film Le prénom to unusual popular and critical acclaim.
Although, on the surface, Piel de Judas would seem to make no cultural, sociological or historical statement, one may just as well scratch beneath its glossy surface and surmise that it’s actually a loud pronouncement against social conformity and sexism. Pretentious? A bit. A truism? Self-evident, ain’t it?
Ever since she doubled as a TV sensation on the daily show Hola, Susana! and, from Tuesday to Sunday, in the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown (with Ricardo Darín and Arturo Puig in two memorable turns), Ms. Giménez suffered from exhaustion, so much so that she promised herself (and her producer, Gustavo Yankelevich), that she would never again combine television and theatre.
Ms. Giménez made good on her promise. After 24 years as the undisputed diva of Argentina’s (and Latin America ’s) prime-time TV, she has made a tumultuous return on Piel de Judas, a comedy whose central character, Marion Bruke, suits her like a glove — a pair of ball gloves, that is.
Piel de Judas revolves around a possessive, domineering, filthy rich wife — a trophy wife — to an acclaimed violinist (Antonio Grimau, a leading man with the right physique du role) who has not resigned himself to the way things are in the bedroom. His hair maybe greying now, but he possesses an abundant mane of hair framing a ruggedly attractive face. The fact that he has many young students provides him with plenty of opportunities to cheat on Marion .
Marion, domineering and foul-mouthed to the point of defiantly describing herself as a truck driver, decides to look the other way. But when a glossy magazine reporter shows up at their door to interview not the musician, but his (socially) self-effacing wife for a feature on “The great woman behind every great man,” Marion is left with no option but to acknowledge that Noelle, the young lady (an excellent actress named Mónica Antonópulos) is not a reporter, but a violin student with a crush on her teacher. Marion feels like another potiche in her spectacular country home.
Full of rage and jealousy, Marion changes her ways and becomes a soft-spoken, sweet lady ready to forgive everyone’s flaws and sins, even at her own expense. Although Ms. Giménez grabs the spotlight the minute she comes on stage, descending the stairs perched on a pair of cheap but undoubtedly upscale stilettos, she proves that her magnetic charm remains intact. After all, most people in the audience come not to see the play but rather to materialize a dream: being close to the fabulous, unreachable persona of Ms. Giménez.
Ms. Giménez, an able comedian who has proved her mettle on the stage and on the big screen, feels quite at ease on the revolving stage designed by Alberto Negrín. Without uttering a single word, just raising her eyebrows or pouting her lips, Ms. Giménez gets an interminable round of affectionate applause from her adoring fans. Unlike other shows, the action continues unhinged, the actors drowning the audience’s clamour with the play’s lines.
Ms. Giménez is, no doubt about it, the centrepiece of a rather shallow and trite comedy, so stereotypically structured that one cannot help recalling the same authors’ stage play and movie Potiche (François Ozon, 2010), with Catherine Deneuve in the lead and Gérard Dépardieu as her cheating but endearing husband.
Other than women’s enpowerment, Peau de vache and Potiche have several other points in common: the two are perfect star vehicles for great divas, the two provide light entertainment, and the two are built on the comedic skills of the protagonist and the generous, confident spotlight moments bestowed on the supporting cast. Mónica Antonópulos, in a stunning feat of transformation from her police officer role in the thriller Muerte en Buenos Aires (Natalia Meta, 2014), becomes an overly sensitive, timid, but ultimately ambitious young woman bent on getting the biggest catch.
And, all in all, Ms. Giménez triumphantly makes the stage hers and only hers, moving around with the same ease and confidence she usually displays on television studios, blowing kisses to the camera as host of the TV game show through which she became Argentina’s prime-time queen. One thing transpires through the 90-minute-plus runtime of Piel de Judas: Susana Giménez is no potiche.
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Piel de Judas (Peau de vache), by Jean Pierre Gredy and Pierre Barillet. Translated and adapted by: Fernando Masllorens and Federico González’s del Pino. Directed by: Arturo Puig. Set design: Alberto Negrín. Lighting: Mariano de María. Costumes: Ximena Puig. Music: Eduardo Zvetelman. With: Susana Giménez, Antonio Grimau, Alberto Fernández de Rosa, David Masajnik, Goly Turilli, Marcelo Serre. Fridays 8pm, Saturdays 8pm and 10.30pm, Sundays 8.30pm. At Teatro Lola Membrives, Av. Corrientes 1280. Tel: 4381-0076. On the Web: www.lolamembrivesteatro.com.ar. Email: info@lolamembrivesteatro.com.ar.