High point

GIBRALTAR’S own international playwright and a full cast of local actors put on their first ever play in London at a theatre where Ian McKellen regularly performs.

Julian Felice called the moment Blue Whale staged at the Space theatre as ‘the highest point of my career as a playwright’. His Dramatis Personae drama company performed on a stage graced by McKellen and soprano Marie McLaughlin in

Rock drama company takes to the London stage

By John Culatto

the past.

Gibraltar’s Ministry of Culture supported the production. It marketed Blue Whale as ‘a dark comedy of love and despair in an online world’. The plot of the story speaks of Lewis, a 30-year-old who goes through a number of challenges to try to court an online date called Tash. The title is a reference to the suicide game played by teenagers that spread from Russia to the Ukraine and the US. It involved 50 challenges with the last one being a call to suicide. Even though Dramatis Personae has taken part in festivals in the UK as well as Gibraltar, it is the first time they have performed on a London stage.

Idea

Felice added to the idea after reading an article on strategies men use to attract women and those who teach them.

“I'm very interested in how people behave and the relationships between them”, he said.

“I think almost all the time we are playing a role, especially when we meet someone new. “It is a mask that we put on and, over time, when we are more comfortable with that person, we start being ourselves.” Felice has won several prizes on the Rock for his productions.

Old timer

A 23,000-year-old human genome has been uncovered on the outskirts of Granada and is one of the oldest ever recorded. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology extracted DNA from human remains found in a cave.

He has done some Llanito comedy but also tackled serious issues about teenage life in his plotlines.

Sam Bush plays Lewis in the production, Natalia Bonavia (pictured) acts out the part of his internet lover Tash while Chris Ablitt plays Lewis’ friend Karl.

The research confirms that the southern tip of Spain provided a key refuge for humans when much of Europe was covered by ice 20,000 years ago and cave-dwelling humans would shield from these freezing conditions in rocky caverns. The DNA has been linked to a 35,000-year-old individual from Belgium discovered in 2016.

THE prestigious Latin Grammy awards are coming to Spain this November in a three-year deal - the first time they are being held outside the United States.

The announcement was made in Sevilla but the specific dates and the host city were not named, though Sevilla appears to be the front-runner.

The Latin Grammys were first held in Los Angeles in 2000.

Last year, they took place in Las Vegas, where Spanish artist Rosalíia (right) won best album for ‘Motomami’. Andalucia president, Juan Manuel Morena Bonilla, met with the Latin Recording Academy CEO, Manuel Abud. Both parties described the deal as 'historic' and 'unprecedented'.

HOLY: Synagogue used as disco in Utrera

Prayers answered

AFTER two years of searching, archaeologists have finally had their prayers answered and uncovered a rare medieval synagogue in the basement of a disco. The 14th century building in Utrera (Sevilla) has also been used as a hospital, restaurant and home for abandoned children down the years.

It is just one of a precious handful of medieval synagogues to have survived the aftermath of the expulsion of Spain’s Jews in 1492.

In his 1604 history of Utrera, Rodrigo Caro, a local priest, historian and poet, described an area of the city centre as it had been in earlier centuries, saying: “In that place, there were only foreign and Jewish people who had their synagogue where the Hospital de la Misericordia now stands”.

Medieval

Utrera mayor Jose Maria Villalobos said it was ‘now scientifically certain that we’re standing in a medieval synagogue right now’.

“Until now there were only four such buildings in all of Spain - two in Toledo, one in Segovia and one in Cordoba,” he said.

“This is an exceptional building that’s been part of Utrera and part of its inhabitants’ lives for 700 years.

“This building was born in the 1300s and has made it all the way to the 21st century.”

One of the key reasons for its survival was that the site was always in use for one purpose or another. The building could be opened for public visits in parallel with archaeologists continuing to excavate the site. The next phase of the project will look to see if there was a rabbi’s house nearby, or a religious school.