Gent d'ara : Comedia en dos actes

"A true relation of the travels and perilous adventures of Mathew Dudgeon,…. is a play written in the early 20th century. It centers on a Barcelona family locked in a comic yet sharp generational conflict: the stern shopkeeper Francisco Rimbau demands his son Joanet take over the shop, while the youth yearns to study architecture, with Rosa, the sensible mother, caught between them and meddling friends fanning the flames. The opening of the work presents a summer night in an old Barcelona home where Rimbau scolds Rosa for encouraging Joanet’s studies and enlists the pompous Don Ignasi to enforce paternal authority. Their witty neighbor Joseph (married to the showy, “learned” Mercedes) arrives, trading barbs that escalate tensions just as Joanet and his friend Lluís appear, culminating in a heated clash and threats from the father. The next day at the family’s Vallcarca villa, Ignasi fails to sway Rosa from supporting her son; Joseph privately counsels Joanet to stay calm and patient, while Rosa begs for peace. As Mercedes insists on reading aloud from her overwrought novel, Ignasi slips away with Joanet to press his case, leaving the family split and the dispute unresolved. (This is an automatically generated summary.)