I WENT TO MADRID'S BIGGEST MUSICAL OPENING OF THE SEASON

And the prolific producer of Los Pilares de la Tierra told me all about his big plans to make musicals a Spanish export

A photo from my camera roll of the opening night curtain call of Los Pilares de la Tierra.

In Madrid last month, I caught ads for the new musical Los Pilares de la Tierra (The Pillars of the Earth) everywhere. There was its signature image of a stained glass window, glowing from an LED billboard in the Plaza del Callao right off the Gran Vía; there it was again in posters on the walls of the city’s train station.

And when I got on a high-speed train for a quick trip to Málaga, every single seat in my car sported an ad for the Barcelona run of El Médico (The Physician)—another Spanish-language, homegrown musical created by the same prolific production company.

That’s beon. Entertainment, the theatrical division of a larger Spanish company that specializes in corporate events, branding, advertising, and marketing, and which styles its name in all lower-case letters with a period on the end. (From here on in, I’ll stick with the lower case but skip the period when it doesn’t end a sentence.)

Back when I was researching the Madrid market for my story earlier this year, beon stood out as one of the only major players in the territory focused on creating original, Spanish-language work. The other, the pop star turned creator-producer Nacho Cano, has a historical musical called Malinche now in its third season in Madrid and set to expand across the Atlantic in 2025; more on that in a future newsletter.

Whereas other Madrid producers are finding success by importing Broadway and West End titles in both replica productions (e.g. Stage Entertainment’s long-running The Lion King) and non-replica stagings (LetsGo’s The Phantom of the Opera), beon is developing a roster of original titles at a frankly astonishing rate. Just check out the timeline of their shows since the company began producing musicals just six years ago:

• 2018: El Médico

• 2020: Antoine

• 2020: Quién Mató a Sherlock Holmes? (Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?)

• 2022: El Tiempo Entre Costuras (Time Between the Seams)

• 2022: La Historia Interminable (The Neverending Story)

• 2023: Forever Van Gogh

• 2024: Los Pilares de la Tierra

For Dario Regattieri, beon’s CEO and hands-on theatrical producer, the initial impulse was to explore how the storytelling skills undergirding the company’s events and branding activities might carry over into telling stories onstage. Then the pandemic prompted beon to pick up the pace in developing a revenue stream from projects that the company could initiate itself rather than waiting for a client to call.

That brings us to Los Pilares de la Tierra, which among Spanish theatergoers is big, brand-name IP. It’s based on The Pillars of the Earth, the most popular novel by the bestselling Welsh writer Ken Follett. A historical saga set in the 12th century and revolving around the construction of a cathedral, Pillars of the Earth has sold nearly 30 million copies worldwide and been adapted into a TV miniseries and a videogame. There’s even an entirely separate, Danish-language musical adaptation that premiered in Copenhagen in 2016.

When I was in Madrid late last month, beon had Los Pilares opening in Madrid, El Médico playing in Barcelona and Forever Van Gogh on tour. In short: the company’s musical theater output seems to be everywhere, and the firm looks to be doing good business with new Spanish-language work. It all made me eager to see one of their shows for myself.

I got the chance when I caught the Nov. 20 world premiere of Los Pilares de la Tierra at the Teatro EDP Gran Vía in Madrid. The next day I sat down with Regattieri to hear about his ambitious plans for the show and for the expansion of Spain’s homegrown work overall.

In this SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll highlight

• the capitalization, the weekly running costs, and everything else you need to know about Los Pilares de la Tierra,

• how the production’s augmented-reality translation glasses worked for me,

• beon’s unusual in-house approach to theater production,

• the company’s ambitions for a Madrid theater of its own,

• what kinds of shows beon is looking to develop next, and

• how Regattieri is strategizing his approach to Broadway and the West End.

The opening was a big, splashy affair with a step-and-repeat on the Gran Vía, pre-show cocktails, a post-performance soirée, and Follett himself in attendance. Here’s what I learned about the show and the company behind it.

IT’S A STYLE OF MUSICAL WE DON’T SEE ON BROADWAY ANYMORE