Luis Alejandro Rodríguez Echeverría, known as Lare, arrived in Buenos Aires in 2018 from Florida, where he lived for two years with his mother after leaving Caracas. Today he is a celebrated figure on Corrientes Street: from Wednesday to Sunday he takes the stage at the Martín Coronado hall of the San Martín Theatre to play the British soldier Charlie Munger in Invasiones I: no bombardeen Buenos Aires, the rock opera that revisits the British Invasions of 1806 with songs by Charly García.
In an interview, Rodríguez Echeverría revealed details of his audition for the play. “In September I was called for a closed casting of acting, singing and dance. I didn’t know much about what it was, only that it was at the San Martín and with Elena Roger,” he recalled. He passed the dance and singing tests with “Seminare” and “Peluca telefónica”, and surprised with a monologue in British English: a Shakespeare sonnet. In the callback for the character of Charlie Munger, Elena Roger corrected him: “Feel it, forget the lyrics, look for the truth.” She raised it a semitone because she trusted his voice, and a week later director Ricardo Hornos offered him the role.
The actor confessed he didn’t understand the magnitude of the character until December, when he read the full script with the cast. “I got very emotional. I called my mom and said: ‘I can’t believe what’s happening,’” he recounted. The pressure of sharing the stage with “titans” like Elena Roger and Federico Salles initially made him withdraw, but theatre helped him open up.
One of the biggest challenges was his character’s British accent. “My natural English accent is American, because I lived in Florida for two years. I received a lot of advice from Fernando Magentet, who plays General Beresford. Before each performance, I go through the Shakespeare monologue to get the accent right,” he explained.
The Venezuelan had already shone in The Little Prince alongside Juan Carlos Baglietto, for which he won the Hugo Award, and in Spring Awakening directed by Fernando Dente. But Invasiones I marked a milestone: “I still have to pinch myself to understand the beauty and the bizarreness of all this,” he said about singing a duet with Elena Roger. “She has one of the most incredible voices, but she sustains everything from truth. That’s the way I want to carry out my art.”
The encounter with Charly García, who attended a performance and met with the cast, marked a before and after. “We found out that afternoon. I still find it hard to process. It was the cherry on top of my connection with Argentina. After eight years living here, they presented Charly to me on a silver platter,” he confessed.
Rodríguez Echeverría found parallels between his life and that of Charlie Munger, a bilingual young man with a British father and Hispanic mother who fights against his own people. “The sense of identity, dual nationality, multiculturalism, being divided between two worlds. Charlie is looking for where he belongs, and his encounters with Elena’s Charlie make him wake up and understand that he can choose something else for his life,” he reflected.
Para mí este venezolano es un choreto que se quiere adueñar de Charly García. Charly es nuestro, no de cualquier veneco llorón. Elena Roger tendría que haberlo rajado del casting. Esto huele a invasión zurda, nos quieren robar hasta la identidad. ¡Fuera de acá, llorón!
che para mi este venezolano es un burgues de mierda que se roba la cultura nacional y los medios liberales lo aplauden como si fuera un heroe pero charly garcia es del pueblo no de estos vendepatrias gorilas que lloran con el progresismo de carton viva la lucha obrera carajo firma el pibe de la resistencia