We sat down for an exclusive interview with David Ottone, Artistic Director of Yllana, ahead of Flamenc Oh!! a playful and irreverent tribute to classic flamenco.
This show runs from 30th September – 10th October at the Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells – Tickets here
What inspired you to bring the world of flamenco and its traditions into this playful new production?
We’ve been working on mixing musical genres and physical comedy for many years at Yllana, with very successful international shows like Pagagnini, where we play around with live classical music, or The Opera Locos, where we do the same with opera as a few examples. So we already knew that music can be an extraordinary comic language. Actually, the idea of doing a flamenco comedy show had been in our minds for almost a decade.
Flamenco is incredibly theatrical. It has everything we love as comedians: passion, drama, very strong characters, rituals, incredible physicality, music, rhythm… and people taking themselves very seriously! So immediately we thought, there’s a lot to play with here.
At the same time, we weren’t flamenco experts. Of course, we’re Spanish, so flamenco has always been around us culturally, but we came into this world almost as outsiders. And I think that was actually very useful, because it allowed us to look at some of its codes with fresh eyes.
Then we brought in these extraordinary flamenco artists, who obviously know that world from the inside, and that’s when the real adventure started. We brought the comedy, they brought the flamenco… and then we started contaminating each other! And that collision is really Flamenc Oh!!.
How do you balance the irreverent humour of Flamenc Oh!! with the passion and discipline at the heart of flamenco?
We never wanted to make fun of flamenco. The flamenco in the show has to be genuinely good first. That’s essential. Once you’ve established that truth… then you can start destroying everything! We always say that we approach things with respect, but not necessarily with reverence. I think that little bit of distance is very important for comedy.
But there’s something else that connects the two worlds: comedy is also an incredibly disciplined art form. People sometimes think physical comedy is just chaos, but it’s exactly the opposite. A gag has to be incredibly precise. Rhythm, timing, movement, pauses… everything matters. And flamenco works in a very similar way. Rhythm and precision are absolutely fundamental.
So actually, the two languages understand each other very well. The fun begins when you take all that flamenco precision, passion and intensity… and introduce one tiny element of chaos. Suddenly everything explodes.
What does the story of a younger generation challenging the old rules allow you to explore about flamenco today?
Flamenco is actually a perfect world in which to explore that, because people sometimes think of it as something very traditional and fixed, when in reality flamenco has never stopped evolving. You look at artists like Camarón or Paco de Lucía and they completely challenged what flamenco could be. And that continues today. Flamenco absorbs things, fights with them, transforms them and somehow still remains flamenco.
So in the show we exaggerate that generational battle through this very traditional flamenco family. The father wants everything done properly, according to the rules, and then somebody from outside the family arrives and starts challenging those rules. He opens the windows, lets other influences come in and, of course, inspires the younger generation. And for comedy, that’s perfect, because the more desperately the father tries to control everything… the worse everything gets!
How did you approach blending traditional flamenco with unexpected musical mashups and comic moments?
That was really at the core of the project from the beginning. We knew that a lot of the comedy could come from how cleverly – and how unexpectedly – those musical collisions happened.
So we were constantly asking ourselves: what else can we throw at flamenco? What happens if we put this song here? What happens if this suddenly becomes rock, pop, disco…? And the funny thing was discovering just how incredibly resilient flamenco is. You throw all these different musical styles at it and flamenco doesn’t disappear. It adapts, it fights back, it absorbs them… and somehow it still sounds like flamenco. That became part of the game for us.
And it also gives audiences who don’t know flamenco an immediate way into the show. Suddenly they recognise something – a song, a melody, a musical reference – and just when they think they know where it’s going, we twist it again. Before they realise it, they’re listening to and enjoying flamenco.
What has the response in Madrid and at the Edinburgh Fringe revealed about how audiences connect with the show?
The most exciting thing has been discovering that you really don’t need to know anything about flamenco to connect with the show.
And actually, that was true in Madrid as well. Not everybody who came to see us was a flamenco fan, and they still had a fantastic time. It would happen outside Spain as well? Would they understand all of this? Would they understand the codes? Would the humour travel?
Edinburgh was a fantastic test for that because you have audiences from everywhere. And what we discovered is that they don’t need to understand every flamenco reference. They understand the characters. They understand the family. They understand the father desperately trying to maintain control, the younger generation wanting to change things, the egos, the jealousy, the passion…
And above all, this is a comedy show. So we want people to laugh! We want them to enjoy the gags, the absurd situations, the physical comedy and these very funny, larger-than-life characters. You don’t need to know anything about flamenco to enjoy a good gag or to laugh at a ridiculous family situation.
At the same time, people who really know flamenco are watching another layer of the show. They recognise the references, the technique and all the little things we’re playing with. When those two audiences are laughing at the same moment, that’s when we know the show is really working.
What do you hope Flamenc Oh!! offers audiences who are discovering flamenco for the first time?
Curiosity. If somebody comes to Flamenc Oh!! knowing absolutely nothing about flamenco, laughs for an hour and then goes home wanting to listen to Camarón or Paco de Lucía, or wanting to see a traditional flamenco performance, that would be fantastic.
Because underneath all the comedy, the flamenco in the show is real. These are fantastic artists, and we want audiences to experience the power, the physicality, the virtuosity and, above all, the emotion of the art form. We’re just giving them a slightly different door to walk through. We want them to enjoy it, laugh with it, be surprised by it and hopefully fall a little bit in love with flamenco along the way.
And if they leave the theatre thinking, “I didn’t know flamenco could do that,” then I think we’ve achieved something.