“Il bavaglio e la parola. Note su una pièce allegorica di Alfonso Sastre”

In The Gag (1954, original title: La mordaza), Alfonso Sastre recovered the external stylistic features of a rural drama to protest against the censorship of the Franco regime which, at the time of the composition of the play, began to prohibit or oppose the staging of his dramas. Using cues taken from the crime news, mindful of the lesson by O’Neill in Desire under the Elms and refining previous personal experiences, Sastre wrote a sparse drama of unquestionable communicative efficacy, in which the situation of an entire country is evoked through the events of a family tyrannized by a father-master. The Gag opposes to the forced silence the responsible and revealing words of denunciation of a rebellious character and the confident words of its creator. He does not fail to reflect on the distortions that every winner imposes on language.