Take 1: When critics attack

In February 2005, La Cubana, perhaps Spain's most popular performance company, brought their new show from Barcelona to Madrid's large, central Teatro Gran Via 66. The logo for Mamá quiero ser famoso (a title translated by the group themselves as Mummy, I wanna be famous) was of a formally dressed mannequin smiling grimly, his head encased in an old-fashioned TV set. Day-glow colours radiate from the screen. The premise of the multimedia spectacle is that a UK TV company has brought a talent show to Spain. According to the blond-wigged and heavily-accented host, this is the country that has the greatest raw material in Europe, as so many celebrities have been manufactured out of nothing. On entering the theatre the audience, made to play the part of would-be TV stars, is required to sign a mock contract giving away all rights to the fictional company. Any disputes will be settled by the British legal authorities.

Interspersed with audience participation and supported by pre-recorded video footage projected on giant screens, the nine actors of the company run through a dizzying array of skits: the “ordinary family” who are literally weighed down by their brief celebrity (they stagger on stage carrying huge TV sets); the trio of Catalan nuns who have become successful rock music producers and strum ear-splitting electric guitars; a blowsy Andalusian folklórica, nicknamed “La churrera de España” (“the fritter seller of Spain,” based on gossip favourite Isabel Pantoja, “la viuda de España” [“the widow of Spain”]), who shot to fame after an unscheduled, but affecting, performance of grief over the dead body of Franco; and the little girl forced to sing for the cameras from her hospital bed, as nurses remove bloody swabs from under her sheets. In one running gag, an inoffensive middle-aged accordion duo are repeatedly bumped off the air, only to be broadcast briefly at the end when they are obliged to perform naked. Finally the pretend TV show, whose fluctuating “ratings” are announced minute by minute, is cancelled and replaced by a quick-cut montage of real-life video violence.

There are multiple ironies here. The parasociality of TV is replaced by the genuine sociality of theatre, much intensified by La Cubana's meta-theatrical incorporation of the audience into its parodic variety show.