The Old Globe’s production of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is a holiday tradition for many San Diego families. This year, the theatre will present the classic Dr. Seuss tale in Spanish for the first time.
The show will be a concert presentation, not a fully staged production. Actors will be at music stands, reading the full script and singing the songs with an orchestra.
Everything – even the word “whatchamawho” – has been translated into Spanish. “Whatchamawho” becomes “whatchamaquien.”
“That’s been the really fun part,” said director James Vásquez. “How do you take Dr. Seuss, who creates words, and translate that and still make it feel like we're honoring the Spanish language, but also honoring Dr. Seuss's language?”
Take the fluttering “who” sound the Whos make when they’re happy or sad.
“Do we keep that, or do we make it ‘quien?’ And does quien sound the same?” Vásquez said. “We thought, ‘No, we can't do that. It takes away the airiness of it.’ But then, we started playing around.”
And opted for a lighter pronunciation of the word’s first sound.
Vásquez said the Globe started exploring the idea before the pandemic, with a goal to reach San Diego’s Spanish-speaking families. Katya María Ojeda Iturbide and Luis Gerardo Villegas translated the Spanish adaptation. They’ve translated stage shows and musical films by Disney, DreamWorks, Marvel and others.
Vásquez especially likes the Spanish versions of the show's two ballads, “Santa for A Day” sung by Cindy Lou Who, and “Now’s the Time,” the lullaby sung by Whoville’s parents.
“Those should have been in Spanish the whole time,” he said. “They're beautiful songs to begin with, but the translation just has this softness to it and a poetic-ness to it that heightens it from the English version.”
Michael Castillejos plays the Grinch. The care spent on the translation is apparent, he said.
“The speakers of Spanish will know that sometimes you get translations, and it's clear that it's a little bit of an afterthought. And that is not the case here,” he said. “As someone who speaks Spanish, as a parent who’s teaching my kid Spanish, it’s very important to me that the music sounds the way it should in Spanish.”
This is Castillejos’ first time in the role. At a rehearsal on Friday, he grimaced and grumbled as he sang about his plan to steal Christmas from the Whos.
Audience members can expect to see a “full Grinch,” he said.
“The costume team here is incredible,” he said.
They’ll see the story of transformation, too.
“This piece, at its core, is a story about what love can do,” Castillejos said. “It's a show with a message of inclusion. It's a show that has a real heart beating at the center that says, hey, what if the answer is actually just taking hands and singing together?”
That’s always a good message to hear, he said.
“But now, in this particular cultural moment, for speakers of Spanish, I think it's beautiful to see that represented on stage,” he said.
The Old Globe’s “¡Cómo el Grinch robó la Navidad!” runs Nov. 21 and 22.
