'Barcelona' review — 'Emily in Paris' star Lily Collins's performance has a touch of déjà vu

Read our review of Barcelona, starring Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte, now in performances at the Duke of York's Theatre through 11 January, 2025.

It’s easy to see why Lily Collins has been cast in Bess Wohl’s drama Barcelona for her West End debut. She plays Irene, an American abroad, who meets hot, local Spanish guy Manuel (Álvaro Morte) in a Barcelona bar while on a hen do and, when she goes back to his, declares “I never do this!” Where have we heard this before?

Uber American, often shrill, and speaking a mile a minute, Collins could be channelling her latest — and most famous — onscreen role Emily Cooper from the hit Netflix series Emily in Paris, in which she also plays an American overseas.

Here, she is just as irritating, calling her new love interest Manolo (his name is Manuel), drunkenly questioning where her missing shoe is (thrown at his head outside the bar), and blowing repeatedly into a penis-shaped whistle, deafening everyone in the room. There is no doubt she nails the brief of brash American, but there is also a depth to her role that hints beyond the more obvious type-casting. Over the course of the play’s short 90-minute runtime, she starts to reveal her vulnerability. Irene explains that she plays make-believe in her job as an estate agent, pretending to inhabit the lives of her clients before viewings, and it takes a stranger pointing out that she’s trapped for her to finally face up to the truth. Collins’s honest performance is both believable and relatable in this moment.

She plays opposite Money Heist actor Álvaro Morte, also making his West End debut but no stranger to the stage, with a number of credits in his native Spain. He is Irene’s foil in every way: quietly brooding, older, and a fan of classical music (Irene’s ringtone is The Black Eyed Peas’ “I Got a Feeling”). Morte is particularly absorbing when he reflects on his marriage and describes the intense, emotional arch of love. There is something both alluring and dangerous about him, from his flashes of anger to his imposing physical presence on stage. The dancing shadows on the walls of set designer Frankie Bradshaw’s cramped, European apartment hint at the fact he is harbouring a terrible secret.

While this run marks Barcelona’s UK premiere, the play had its first outing in 2013 and is set in 2009. Debates about Iraq and terror attacks, while relevant later in the play, feel forced, as do Irene’s repeated discussions around her ancestors’ pioneer history and the huge cultural gulf between Americans and Europeans. Wohl’s play truly sings when she hits us with some big revelations and these two strangers are shown not to be so dissimilar after all — each struggling with their own demons, in need of another to show them the way out of the darkness.

Book Barcelona tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte in Barcelona. (Photo by Marc Brenner)