Barcelona review: Now it’s Emily in Barcelona, a rom-com with a Spanish hunk and a dark twist, writes GEORGINA BROWN

You can take Emily out of America, but you can’t take America out of Emily.

That’s exactly the point of Emily In Paris, the hit Netflix comedy-drama so ridiculous that its fifth season has just been announced.

All thanks to Lily Collins’ Emily, the unyieldingly cheerful charmer who waltzes through Paris in outfits to die for, fails to learn French and thus forces everyone to speak English.

Very quickly she makes le monde do everything her way. And here’s Emily in London.

Or rather, Lily Collins makes her stage debut as an American abroad, this time in Barcelona, ​​the title of Bess Wohl’s play.

Director Lynette Linton’s production begins with a haunting atmosphere, as the shadow of a young woman dances on the wall. Pictured during the performance: Lily Collins (playing Irene) and Ãlvaro Morte playing Manuel

Lily Collins’ character and a gang of friends had been on a hen weekend enjoying cheap wine when she accepted the challenge of chatting to the older Spaniard at the bar.

She bursts into a city apartment in a sequined jumpsuit that Emily wouldn’t have been seen dead in, from her face on sangria, having lost one of her silver, chunky-heeled sandals like a modern-day Cinderella. Will this be a fairy tale?

One of the strengths of this tricky two-hander is that it keeps you guessing.

Director Lynette Linton’s production starts with a spooky atmosphere, as a young woman’s shadow dances on the wall, and then – with a chilling scream – overlays all the gothic horror.

The mood then softens into a rom-com with the arrival of our otherwise unnamed Cinderella and the flat’s owner, Manuel – although she’s so soaking wet that she calls him ‘Manolo’, as in shoe designer Blahnik. A real Emily blunder.

She, and a gang of friends, had been on a stag weekend enjoying cheap wine when she took up the challenge of chatting to the older Spaniard at the bar.

And since one thing apparently led to another, it looks like she was taken to his apartment. She is indeed drunk enough to find it “cute” (actually, she finds everything cute), even if it’s more like dingy college dorm rooms than a sexy love nest.

They chat between kisses. ‘Love is the language of Italy. What is Spanish the language of?’ asks Squiffy Cinders. “Spain,” answers a dry Manuel.

Then it gets dark again as she staggers to the toilet. The mysterious Manuel (a fine, understated Alvaro Morte, who plays criminal mastermind The Professor in the Netflix crime series Money Heist) rolls up the sleeves of his black shirt and clenches his jaw. Scary.

But when she returns, he opens a bottle of Rioja, licks her foot and they giggle about the penis-shaped whistle she finds in her pocket (one of the loot from the bachelor party) before the play takes an unconvincing high-profile turn.

Morte’s macho, brooding Manuel hates Americans: “Your big cars, your movies, your McDonald’s… your stupid music, your stupid wars.” Not this young woman’s fault.

And since one thing apparently led to another, it looks like she was taken to his apartment. She is indeed drunk enough to find it ‘cute’

Lily Collins and Ãlvaro Morte bow at the curtain during the press evening screening of ‘Barcelona’ at The Duke Of York’s Theater

Lily in Collins stars in Emily In Paris, Netflix’s hit comedy-drama. Here she is depicted as Emily

So what is moody Manuel up to? Revenge on behalf of his nation? With her phone battery down to 3 percent, this woman from the land of the free seems increasingly trapped.

The play is only 100 minutes long and is too long to make us care about these two characters.

But as the plot finally thickens and both reveal their much more interesting selves, we finally become involved – and increasingly tense – as dawn breaks and we can hear the demolition team arriving with the crane and wrecking ball to raze the building to the ground to make. Time is running out.

To reveal more would be unfair. Barcelona is not perfect: too much is told and too little is shown. But it becomes a play about learning to live again when you think it’s all over.

Linton draws a wonderfully precise portrayal of Collins, who starts out as a stereotype (Collins in her comic element, as an empty blonde with verbal diarrhea), but gradually finds stillness, a quiet intensity and hidden depths… to the surprise of her character . and the public.

A brilliant stage career beckons.