I saw 4 plays during my trip to...

... Buenos Aires. Only 2 originated in Argentina. The others came from France and Germany:

1) Matias Del Federico's BAJO TERAPIA (UNDER THERAPY): A therapist tells 3 couples she's treating to get together and counsel one another. Despite borrowing from TOC TOC (see below) and GOD OF CARNAGE, it's deep and hilarious. Great performances by Carlos Portaluppi (it's impossible not to laugh when he laughs, and when he gets mad his face turns so red and his voice doesn't need mics) and Mercedes Scapola (amazing body language). There are many sex jokes, but the context and line deliveries don't make the play feel vulgar. Little details about ROBERTO & ANDREA (one of the couples) made me suspect from the beginning that he was hitting her. It turns out he was raping her. Oops! "The plot was a form of lie" twist endings can completely ruin the story, but that doesn't happen here. The fact that 2 of the couples actually work for the therapist and everything was a set-up to get ANDREA to confess is far-fetched but not unrealistic. They must've used elements from other patients or even their own lives into their dialogue, which must've been improvised. The final seconds (the stage lights are turned off one by one, and each time, a gunshot is heard) gave me goosebumps.

2) Laurent Baffie's TOC TOC (a word play with "OCD" and "Knock knock"): 6 patients with different types of OCD wait for their therapist while getting to know one another. Each of the characters are defined by their obsession to the point where they become 1-joke characters. The play starts out funny but the jokes become easy to predict very fast. One of the characters has Tourette's, but that's no excuse for the over-reliance on low-brow humour. The best performance was Mauricio Dayub's. There's acting, then over-acting and then Daniel Casablanca. My God! I counted literally 7 times where an actor would break out of character and giggle. The romance between LILY and OTTO/BOB was underdeveloped, and the one between CAMILO/VINCENT and MARÍA/MARIE made no sense. The twist about ALFREDO being the therapist was a little bit predictable (he's already at the office at the beginning, he's the only who can't be cured, he has info. on all the othet conditions, etc.). By the way, will they sue him once they realize who he is?

3) Claudio Tolcachir's LA OMISIÓN DE LA FAMILIA COLEMAN (THE COLEMAN FAMILY'S OMISION): 3 siblings live with their mom and grandma. They're poor and constantly wait for the 4th sibling (who's married and has a steady job) to visit or at least call. It sounds like a sad drama, but it has a lot of dark and at times absurd humour, which was refreshing. Actually, I loved it! Fernando Sala's performance was good; Inda Lavalle's was weak.

4) Charles Lewinsky's EIN GANZ GEWÖHNLICHER JUDE (AN ORDINARY JEW): A German jew is invited to visit a school to be interviewed by students. This isn't like most monologues where the actor stands in an empty stage and talks directly to the audience. EMMANUEL GOLDFARB talks to himself thinking what he'll reply to the invitation (in the 2nd person to the teacher who called him). That and Gerardo Romano's performance are the reasons why the play's never boring. It breaks the rule of turning off all the lights during a scene transition, and it closes the curtain to transition into the epilogue. The audience thought it was over and applauded every time. The character is right about some things but wrong about others. He says "Why did you say "a member of the Jewish community" instead of "jew"?". Ummm... Because some jews are overly sensitive and think being called that directly is offensive. Duh! Also, like a lot of minorities in real life, he's a hypocrite on the subject of pain. You see, saying "You'll never understand what is like to lose a loved one in a concentration camp" is true, but "You'll never understand what is like to die in a concentration camp"... Come on! You don't understand it either!

Have you seen any of these? Do you agree with me?