Cómeme el Coco, Negro

Why a Cómeme el Coco, Negro revival?

On January 2006, while we were still performing Mamá quiero ser famoso (“Mummy, I wanna be famous”) in Teatre Novedades in Barcelona, we had our 25th anniversary as a theatre company, so we had a big celebration with all our people (previous partners, families, friends and fans…) When we finished the tour, we thought about celebrating with our audience, who actually made our company exist all those years… We had two possibilities: To create an anthological show with pieces of every play we ever did or showcase one of our shows in its entirety. We chose the second option, for various reasons: Cómeme el Coco, Negro, apart from being one of our most emblematic plays, is an homage to ourselves. It talks about theatre -our main motivation during all these years-, it talks about an itinerant theatre company -more or less like ours-, it talks about the traditional way of making theatre -something we practice regularly- and finally it also talks about Revista and Music Hall, theatre genres mistreated and nearly extinct that we have a great regard for.

From all the shows that the company has performed, “El Coco” is possibly the one that represents the spirit, the creation and the character of La Cubana. Because of this and many more reasons, we chose this show for our celebration tour, taking it from town to town, village to village.

The production and the tour

In the summer of 2005 we produced an English version of Cómeme el Coco, Negro for the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival. The result made us realize that regardless of all the years gone by, the original version was still alive and was totally in force. So, in 2007 we revived it for our anniversary.

There were a few handicaps, on the one hand the fear of a comeback, there is a saying in Spain which begins with “Sequels never…” and on the other hand, the theatre genre that inspired the first show (La Revista and The Music-Hall) had disappeared, leaving a gap for two generations without references.

All the fears ended on the premiere night. The audience that were seeing it for the first time were surprised with the same intensity of the audience eighteen years before. Those who had seen it before or knew about it where enjoying the show, reviving what they knew and remembering a theatre genre, which simply with music, joy, songs, comedy and naughtiness had managed to entertain several generations of problems and shortage.

Enjoy the Spanish version of the show:

Plot

A Music-Hall Theatre Company (Teatro Cubano de Revista), constituted by artists on the penultimate step of their professional life perform a show called Cómeme, el Coco, Negro. From this point, misunderstanding, surprise and what everyone seems to know… and what is left to be explained from the plot of Cómeme el Coco, Negro from 1989.

Numbers of the Variety Cómeme el Coco, Negro:

1. “Lentejuelas y sonrisas”
2. “Romance de la reina Mercedes”
3. “Una mujer completa”
4. “Que viene el coco”
5. “Violetas Imperiales”
6. “Las viuditas”
7. “Compuesta y sin novio”
8. “Chinatown”
9. “El tirachinas”
10. “Estudiantina portuguesa
11. “Rey del Molino”
12. “Valencia”
13. “Soy Minero”
14. “Mírame”
15. “Por la calle de Alcalá”
16. “Yo soy la vedette”
17. “Quiero volver a Rio”
18. “Madre cómprame un negro”
19. “Cómeme el Coco, Negro”