✶ WHAT IS LA CRIOLLA? ✶

✶ The most rebellious Cabaret in town ✶

But La Criolla is not just a cabaret: it is a shattered mirror reflecting the lost souls of a city on the edge. The story begins with an orphan girl selling newspapers in the streets of Barcelona’s Barri Xino. With the unmistakable sound of her little pan flute, she opens the door to a forgotten world: La Criolla — a den of beauty and decay, of music and resistance, that shook the Catalan capital between 1925 and 1938.

From its dazzling inauguration with the legendary performance of Leopoldo Fregoli to its destruction under the bombs of war, La Criolla is a dizzying journey through the dreams and betrayals of a group of artists who refuse to disappear. Amid scandals, gender-bending performances, artistic manifestos, Dalinian delusions, and acts of poetic justice, the show reveals the most daring—and most human—side of a turbulent era.

Figures like the Cuban vedette Sarah, the rebellious Flor de Otoño, and the enigmatic Jean Genet parade through La Criolla. Icons such as Josephine Baker or Salvador Dalí make occasional appearances, and the cabaret is often visited by intellectuals, artists, and poets like Josep Maria de Sagarra, Joan Miró, or Sebastià Gasch, drawn by its cultural effervescence and transgressive spirit.

With humor, lyricism, and stirring poetic power, La Criolla speaks of memory, dignity, and the fight to keep beauty alive even as everything crumbles. A choral and irreverent musical that transforms the past into a living, vibrant, and necessary song.

✶ A true story. A fictional tragedy. A song of freedom ✶

La Criolla is a musical journey between delirium and memory, between tango and pasodoble, between the dazzling light of art and the darkness of war. Inspired by real people and events — Flor de Otoño, Sarah “La Cubanita”, Paco Madrid, Jean Genet, Josephine Baker... — the show blends musical genres and theatrical styles to tell the story of a scandalous nightclub that became a symbol of artistic resistance. With original script, lyrics, and music by Albert Carbonell Sauri, and performed by a cast of eight musician-actors who embody over twelve characters, La Criolla is a choral, critical, and utterly vibrant theatrical experience.

✶ Plot ✶

Barcelona, 1925. La Nena, a young orphan who sells newspapers through the streets of the Barri Xino, announces the opening of a new cabaret destined to make history: La Criolla. From that moment on, a door opens to a vibrant and fierce world, where nothing is as it seems and everything can explode.

Inside, the women who work at the venue are torn between mutual support and the need to survive, between art and humiliation. Flor de Otoño, Sarah, Luz, and the Asturianita form a complex and passionate female universe, marked by love, struggle, and fragility. Around them, characters like Pepe –the owner who plays dirty–, Paco Madrid –the journalist who wonders whether there’s real magic or just the need to let go–, and Maestro Riera –an idealistic violinist devoted to the power of art– create a human landscape full of contradictions.

Tensions rise: the trial of Luz, acts of betrayal, the death of Sarah, and the sudden appearance of Jean Genet as her replacement shake the very foundations of La Criolla. In the midst of collapse, a delirious episode led by Salvador Dalí plunges the characters into a psychedelic number –“Don’t Come to Me with Mandanga”– blending social critique, Dadaism, and madness.

After Pepe flees, abandoning everyone to open a new club –only to be found dead under mysterious circumstances– the artists and workers choose to resist. They form a cooperative to save the cabaret and defend their dignity.

With a provocative and poetic staging, La Criolla offers an emotional and choral portrait of a forgotten Barcelona. A song of resistance and beauty born from precariousness and rebellion.

✶ Characters ✶

Meet them. Love them. Or hate them:

✶ La Nena, the voice of the people.
✶ Pere Riera, violinist and soul of the cabaret.
✶ Pepe de la Criolla, the cabaret tyrant.
✶ Flor de Otoño, lawyer by day, diva by night, rebel always.
✶ La Asturianita, the glamorous traitor.
✶ Sarah, the fading vedette.
✶ Luz, a woman fighting for freedom.
✶ Jean Genet, the outlaw-poet provocateur.
✶ Paco Madrid, a journalist caught between logic and magic.
✶ And the occasional appearance of other characters, some of them universal, like Leopoldo Fregoli, Josephine Baker or Salvador Dalí...

✶ Music, theatre and revolt ✶

Scored for a unique eight-piece orchestra (violin, piano/accordion, double bass, harp, trumpet, trombone, reeds, drums), La Criolla blends jazz, tango, copla, swing, vaudeville, chamber textures, and even surrealist soundscapes. It’s bold. It’s strange. It’s beautiful. Just like the cabaret that inspired it.

✶ Practical Info ✶

📍 Premiere: [TBA]
🎭 Duration: 2 acts – 20 scenes – Approx. 135 min [2h15']
👥 Cast: 8 actor-musicians
🎼 Language: Catalan (with optional English surtitles)
🕺 For: lovers of bold musicals, forgotten history, and emotional truth.

✶ Some stories burn… only to shine again ✶

La Criolla is more than a musical. It’s a tribute to the misfits who lit up the night, to the artists who refused to bow down, and to the duende that lives in every scar, every song, every broken mirror.

Music, Maestro!