Over the Thames: A shipwreck

Cast/Crew
Director: Luis Peirano
Play: Mario Vargas Llosa
Production: Asociación Cultural Peruano Británica
Runtime: 80 minutes without interval
Actors: Alberto Isola (Chispas Bellatín), Bertha Pancorvo (Raquel/Pirulo Saavedra)

In a luxury suite at The Savoy Hotel in London, with a view of the Thames, two old friends meet again. Chispas became an important business man, but he always missed Pirulo since an unfortunate event separated them for ever. Pirulo became Raquel, reborn as a woman and she seized the opportunity to see Pirulo in London to return to the past.

The meeting, little by little, becomes a story of fantasy and dreams imagining what their life could have been like, the life that was awakened with a kiss and at the same time ended. From that time on, as Vargas Llosa said “Facts start to happen in reality, to move on to Chispa’s subjectivity, a land of painful and sweet memories that then becomes fiction” [1].

Fiction is involved in all possible lives that they could live (if Pirulo died or if they had a relationship). We have to imagine which is the real story abandoning the rest to the infinite combinations of the existence. But, the story that Vargas Llosa presents has no contact with transsexual experience, it only follows common ideas, but he never tries to understand the “Other”. For example, Raquel said she made a sexual reassignment that transformed her into a complete woman because she feels sexual pleasure (orgasm) like any other woman. There is no scientific information that can explain something like that. Sexual reassignment has serious consequences and people that decide to do it have to sacrifice the orgasmic pleasure. But Raquel enjoys it with the same intensity as a multiorgasmic woman. It seems that instead of representing a transsexual he is recreating what the masculine fantasy projects towards them, which are only the same passions that turn to the women into sexual objects in society.

As Alegria said, the end of the story reduces the possibilities to a simple homosexual desire [2] that never become reality because everything is only fiction, Chispa’s imagination. On the contrary, there is very little imagination in the way women are presented, they could only be a faithful wife or a seductive bitch. The play presents too many aspects that were unnecessary and did not recreate the real dilemma, why so much silence? why so much fear?, why so much repulsion? Why are women only conceived of as virgins or prostitutes?

The play could be a possibility to dissolve some prejudices about transsexual people and offer another way to understand identity. But it goes for the same path already known and predictable. Also the play seems to say that the future for women is restricted to marriage, servility, obedience or wild abandon

About the complex matter of identity, Over Thames is a shipwreck. Possibilities are all tragedies. If Pirulo really tried to kiss Chispas or not, that event only gives both of the characters a lot of pain: the fight of Raquel to become a woman, the death of Pirulo by Chispa’s hands that make him feel regret and shame, Chispa’s silent desire for Pirulo, dead or alive, his impossibility to accept himself as homosexual, accept his love for another human being (the same yet different at the same time). They only talk about sadness but never confront love, the real love they feel for each other. A love that was not able to break down the prejudices.

Vargas Llosa and Peirano decided for the short path. Transsexuality is a silent reality that very few people know, this was a perfect occasion to know about this community that suffers a vulnerability of their human rights and their citizenship. What would be the reaction of the public if for example the role was portrayed by a real transvestite, or by another man? What they saw were heterosexual partners who did not stop laughing whenever the word homosexual (and derivates) were said. What would the public have done if two men were being seduced or a transvestite, or transsexual or a transgender in affectionate embraces? Maybe we could notice the real discrimination that exists in our society against transsexual people. What was a very interesting idea became a common and simple play without any challenge.
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[1] Vargas Llosa, Mario. “Nunca dejará de maravillarme la manera como nacen en mi cabeza las historias”. Programa Al pie del Támesis, pág. 3.

[2] “A medio camino de una obra estupenda”. Perú 21. 1 de abril del 2008.

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