Tuesday, October 21, 2014

El Tenorio

Wikipedia tells me that Don Juan Tenorio,written by José Zorrilla in 1844, is the more romantic of the two principal Spanish-language plays about the legend of Don Juan. The other is the 1630 El Burlador de Sevilla probably written by Tirso de Molina. So now you know.

It's a Spanish theatre tradition to perform El Tenorio on All Saints Day as part of the Bank Holiday "celebrations". In turn this has made it one of the most lucrative of Spanish plays. It's a pity poor old  Zorilla sold the rights soon after he wrote it. He thought it was just another pot boiler.

I fear that a play written in the mid 19th Century, based on an older 17th Century work, is going to be a bit of a push for my Spanish. But blow it. Something traditional that we still haven't done being performed in Jumilla just 35k from home with the most expensive tickets priced at just 10€. Why the hell not? It must be worth a punt. We can always sneak away at the intermission if needs be. Maggie was remarkably easy to persuade.

So just the tickets to buy. There didn't seem to be any online ticket sales but there was a box office number. I tried ringing a couple of times without success. Then I checked a few Google searches and found that the box office only opens for a couple of hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. Fiddlesticks!; I work all the time that the box office is open. Bit of a problem then. Anyway the website said that any tickets reserved by phone have to be picked up and paid for at least a couple of days beforehand or they will be resold - more of a problem. Reading between the lines I guess I can't buy tickets over the phone with a plastic card.

I've found an email address and I've written. Provided they read their email, and I suspect a theatre will, I'm sure they will find a solution.

Interestingly, well it's interesting to me, on the way home tonight I bought a couple of tickets for a play In Pinoso this weekend, The only way to get them also seemed to be to go to the box office in very restricted opening hours. The difference is that I could. For Don Juan I can't.

Nothing like making it easy though.

PS The next morning, before 8.30, the theatre had responded and said they'd keep a couple of tickets.



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