Cadiz (Play)

Three lifelong friends sit down for dinner. The evening promises to be quiet, but it quickly turns into a minefield of accusations and buried secrets. Their friendship is about to explode… although perhaps a few well-thrown punches are exactly what it needs to come back stronger than ever. A stage comedy that has captivated tens of thousands of spectators.

Three lifelong friends — Eugenio, Adrián, and Miguel — meet for dinner. None of them realize that what seems like an ordinary evening will end in total chaos.

Eugenio, an overworked lawyer and full-time father ever since his wife moved to Argentina for work, is on the verge of a breakdown. And having Adrián sitting across the table does not help at all. He has not been able to stand him for quite some time.

Adrián became rich overnight after winning the football pools, and ever since, he has reinvented himself completely: a Ducati motorcycle, a hair transplant, a twenty-year-old girlfriend, and absolutely no remorse about leaving his ex-wife Virginia with none of the winnings.

While Eugenio boils with resentment and Adrián flaunts his flashy new life, Miguel — a forty-something eternal adolescent still living with his parents — desperately tries to keep the peace… or at least stop dinner from derailing. Unsurprisingly, he fails. Everything explodes when Eugenio admits that Virginia has asked him to handle her divorce. Adrián completely loses control and lunges at him… and just as the fight begins, the action freezes. Miguel, suddenly acting as narrator, explains what happened next: yes, the divorce ended in a financial settlement, but the friendship was destroyed in the process.

One year later, hoping there is always room for old friends, they meet for dinner again. Adrián, now obsessed with self-help and personal growth, is determined to repair the damage. Eugenio, however, is hiding a secret: he has fallen in love with Virginia, his friend’s ex-wife.

At first, the evening feels calmer, almost civilized. They even discuss the possibility of finally taking the trip to Cádiz they used to dream about in their younger days. Then Adrián casually drops a bombshell: he slept with Virginia. “A goodbye fling,” he says with a perfectly innocent face. Eugenio is devastated and storms out. Adrián and Miguel burst into laughter — it was only a joke. They already knew the truth about Eugenio and Virginia from the beginning.

When Eugenio returns, the situation escalates into a full-blown fight that ends in the emergency room. But not everything is disastrous: while waiting there, Miguel meets Andrea, a nurse who — miraculously — makes him reconsider adulthood for the first time in his life.

Another year passes. Miguel finally takes the big step and moves out of his parents’ house to live with Andrea. His newfound maturity does not last long, however, when during the move he discovers a positive pregnancy test and immediately panics. Luckily, Eugenio applies basic logic: Andrea had her period two weeks ago, so the test cannot be hers. Then whose is it? Marina’s — Andrea’s sister. And who is the father? Adrián, who has apparently added yet another chapter to his already chaotic romantic résumé.

Seven months later, the baby is born and, in a twist of fate, is named Eugenio. Miguel and Andrea become the godparents, and Adrián ends up joining Eugenio’s law firm just to keep annoying him on a daily basis.

They never do make it to Cádiz. But the three friends remain convinced that what truly matters is not going there — it is arguing endlessly about going there. And despite everything, one thing is clear: none of them are ever going to change. Fortunately, they will keep loving each other anyway.

RELEVANT INFORMATION: Francisco Nortes is a Spanish actor, playwright, and stage creator whose career spans theater, film, and television.

Nortes became widely known through his work in television series and on stage. He has received the Berlanga Award for Best Actor and a nomination for the Unión de Actores Awards in the Best Breakthrough Actor category. Alongside his acting career, he has also developed an acclaimed body of work as a playwright.

Cádiz is a comedy of entanglements built around the absurdities of masculinity and the need to redefine what it means to “be a man.” The story unfolds through sharp, fast-paced dialogue and three archetypal protagonists — the burned-out responsible man, the rich overgrown teenager, and the forty-three-year-old Peter Pan — who create a perfect engine for comic conflict.

Its short-scene structure, time jumps, and tone — constantly shifting between warmth and corrosive humor — make it easy to imagine as either a feature film or a comedy miniseries. The play has been running continuously since 2019, accumulating hundreds of performances and tens of thousands of spectators.

AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Film, TV Film.

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.