El método Grönholm

3rd season of this ruthless and hilarious comedy by Jordi Galcerán, directed by Tamzin Towsend, at the Teatro Cofidis Alcázar in Madrid. With Luis Merlo, Jorge Bosch, Marta Belenguer and Ismael Martínez, four candidates in a combat where cunning, cruelty and unscrupulousness seem to have no limits.

The last candidates for an executive position in a multinational company undergo the final test of the selection process. A joint test in which the procedure proposed by the company turns into a combat where cunning, cruelty and unscrupulousness seem to have no limits. How far will they be willing to go to get what they have always dreamed of?

After the premiere of "El método Grönholm" more than fifteen years ago, friends and acquaintances told me about many of their own experiences in selection processes. In the light of some of these experiences, the conclusion is that I fell short in my comedy. The twisted games to which the psychologists in my fictitious company subjected the applicants were minor compared to some real anecdotes. The bottom line, however, was the same: How far are we willing to go to get the job of our dreams? Where are our limits when the rewards are high enough? Here we laugh at them, we feel their ridicule, we think we would never go to such extremes, but... A very sensible friend of mine who was applying for a job as a shop assistant in a shoe shop told me that in the middle of the interview the manager told her that if she wanted the job she should turn her back and pray out loud an Our Father. Just like that. My friend confessed to me that she needed the job, that she knew the Lord's Prayer and, after thinking about it for a couple of seconds, she stood up, turned around and prayed it. What would you have done?

The idea for "El método Grönholm" was born out of a true story. In a wastepaper basket, a journalist happened to find the discarded files of some aspiring supermarket cashiers. On them, the interviewer had written down his impressions of each candidate. The journalist did a report on it and transcribed some of his notes. They were along the lines of "not this one, she's fat", "she's a moron, she can't even shake hands", "she stinks", and so on. The news led me to think about the relationship that is established between someone who needs a job and the one who has the power to provide it. A situation in which the applicant tries to show his best face, or at least the face he thinks is expected of him, and the interviewer tries to find out who he has in front of him and whether he is the kind of person he needs. A game of deception and cunning that, taken to the limit, became this comedy. A game we have all played at one time or another. We have all been tested in one way or another and I think that is the main reason why "El método Grönholm", in the fifteen years since its premiere, has been performed in sixty-odd countries and continues to be revived. We all identify with the dilemmas the characters go through, we put ourselves in their shoes, and deep down we doubt how far we could go if the reward is high enough. By the way, that supermarket interviewer, after the report, was fired for lack of ethics, but if instead of writing "not this one, because she is fat", he had written "the candidate's profile does not fit the job" there would have been no news and nothing would have happened, although the reality would still be the same, that he didn't take her because she was fat. JORDI GALCERÁN

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