Set sometime between 1917 and 1920, Luces de Bohemia (Bohemian Lights) chronicles the last night of Max Estrella’s life as he roams the streets of Madrid. It is a time of corruption, and of political and social unrest in the city. At the start of the play, Max, a blind poet, finds himself out of work. No one appreciates his poetry, and the local paper has decided there is no work for him. While he and his wife discuss their impoverished situation, Don Latino, Max’s elderly friend and drinking companion, pays them a visit. He owes Max money from the sale of old books, but unfortunately he sold them on to a bookseller for a pittance. And so, Max and Don Latino step out into the night to negotiate more money from Zarathustra, the bookseller.
This is the beginning of Max Estrella’s final journey around the taverns and streets of Madrid. After a fruitless visit to Zarathustra, he and Don Latino end up in a local tavern. Here they meet Enriqueta, a local prostitute. Max owes her money for a lottery ticket, but the blind poet has spent his last pennies on drink. He gives his coat to a young barman to take to the pawnbrokers. After a while, the barman returns, bloodied. Riots have broken out on the streets. Max, however, is more interested in the money he has received for his pawned coat. He can now buy the lottery ticket from Enriqueta. But she has vanished, and so he and Don Latino leave the safety of the tavern and set out in search of her.
Enriqueta is found outside a café. While she and Max argue over the ticket, a band of bohemians emerge from the café. These are the Modernists, a group of second-rate writers with great respect for Max’s work, despite his lack of recognition from the Spanish literary establishment. One of the Modernists recites a rousing poem, and in so doing attracts the attention of the local police. Blind – and blind drunk – Max insults the police captain and is subsequently carted off to the cells. Here, he encounters a young man from Barcelona. The young prisoner is struck by Max’s eloquence and refinement – despite the poet’s inebriation – and the two share a brief conversation about the need for revolution in Spain. Soon, however, a jailer summons the young man from the cell. His future looks ominous, and Max bids him a tearful farewell.
Meanwhile, in the offices of the Popular Paper, the editor Don Filiberto receives a visit from the agitated Modernists. They urge Don Filiberto to publish an editorial denouncing Max’s imprisonment, but their childish disrespect for the great figures of Spanish literature only serves to irritate him. Eventually, he agrees to contact a high-ranking government minister, Paco, to secure Max’s release. Once freed, Max visits Paco – who happens to be a childhood friend – to complain about his treatment at the hands of the police. Paco is both shocked and moved to see the impoverished state of his old friend. He offers to arrange a small pension for Max, which the poet accepts before going off into the night with Don Latino, once more in search of alcoholic refreshment.
In the Café Colón, Max and Don Latino encounter the acclaimed Nicaraguan poet, Rubén Darío. Rubén Darío recites a poem, and for a moment Max is transported in his memory back to Paris, where he once lived happily as a poet. Later, after an encounter with two prostitutes, he and Don Latino find themselves in yet another part of the city that has been vandalised during the rioting. A distraught woman carries a dead child, shot in the head accidentally by the police. Even though he cannot see her, Max is touched by the sound of the woman’s grief and anger, but her neighbours are keen to silence her, fearing she will provoke the police.
The dawn finds Max and Don Latino seated in a doorway. Max expounds on a new literary genre he has invented – the esperpento – which involves the depiction of the world through distortion and the grotesque. It seems that even though he is blind, Max’s nocturnal wanderings have changed his view of the world, shedding light on all that is corrupt and sordid in society. Max insists he is dying, much to Don Latino’s annoyance. Eventually tiring of Max’s histrionics, Don Latino leaves the poet slumped in the doorway. Before he departs, he takes Max’s wallet. And so, Max lies there, abandoned, until a laundrywoman and concierge happen upon him. They initially think he is drunk, but soon realise that he has, tragically, expired.
Max’s wake is a shabby affair. His body lies in a poorly-made coffin, while his wife Madame Collet and his daughter Claudinita mourn him. Some of the Modernists have come to pay their respects. Don Latino also turns up, but not before having drowned his grief in wine. He stumbles over the body, upsetting the family. After this inebriate has been led off the premises, shady Basilio Soulinake arrives. He runs his eye over Max’s body and concludes that the poet is not dead, merely comatose. Collet and Claudinita are overjoyed, but when the concierge who initially discovered Max’s lifeless body arrives, she insists that the poet is indeed dead. She can smell his rotting corpse. The argument is resolved when the hearse driver lights a match and tests it on Max’s thumb. The poet does not respond, and it is decided that he has most definitely shuffled off this mortal coil.
In a graveyard, two gravediggers talk about the cemetery’s latest inhabitant – a literary great who, sadly, died poorly. They come across Rubén Darío and a distinguished old gentleman, the Marquis of Bradomín, who were two of the very small crowd of mourners at Max’s funeral. Tragically, it seems Max is just as neglected by Spain in death as he was in life. Don Latino has gone from the burial to a tavern. The others in the bar discover that he has a large amount of money on him, won using Max’s lottery ticket. A fight breaks out over the money, but in the end the characters’ greed turns to morbid fascination. They read in the paper that a mother and daughter have committed suicide. They were, no doubt, Collet and Claudinita. The only two people who truly cared about Max have died, prompting the group to comment on just how grotesque – oresperpento – the world can be.
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