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Serendipity

Soy Rada

Netflix · 2021 · 68 min

A lockdown-era stand-up set featuring magic, music, and family stories.

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The charm of this special lies in its bizarre, slightly eerie quarantine-era setup. Recorded at the Teatro Astral in Buenos Aires during a strict pandemic lockdown, Argentine comedian Agustín Aristarán, widely known as Soy Rada, steps onto an empty stage with no physical crowd. Instead of the usual feedback of a live room, he plays to six camera operators and his backing band, Soy Rada & the Colibriquis. The laughter you hear was captured later, when Netflix played the recorded performance to a screening room of real viewers to record their genuine reactions.

Aristarán structured the hour around the theme of serendipity, charting the accidental detours that shaped his life and career. He touches on childhood memories in Bahía Blanca, an early disappointment involving the Three Wise Men, and the birth of his daughter. The standout bit centers on his father discovering marijuana at age 60, a narrative that fits perfectly into his style of whimsical storytelling. Backed by live music and sprinkled with his signature stage magic, the performance shows a comic finding a way to generate warm, personal energy in a completely cold room.

The set list

3 bits

  1. Backstage anxiety prior to performing

    Opens with Aristarán panicking 10 minutes before curtain and refusing to go out, until director Pablo Faro motivates him by recalling advice Aristarán once gave his own daughter for her first day of school.

  2. Performing to an empty venue amid the pandemic

    Aristarán addresses the strange circumstances directly, expressing how empty he feels without an audience and acknowledging the artificiality of revolving cameras and canned laughter.

  3. Parenting and family struggles

    Explores the challenges and realities of child-rearing and home life through jokes, puns, and magic tricks.

How it plays

Tone
Entertaining, motivating, reflective, and playful.
On stage
Delightful, witty, eclectic, and vulnerable; transitions from backstage panic to an upbeat, charming presence using wordplay, magic, and song.
Pace
Crisp and concise tempo, kicking off with an anxious backstage entrance before building momentum through jokes, musical interludes, and magic demonstrations.
About
family and parenting, magic and music, performing during the pandemic without an audience, life's unpredictable paths and serendipity

What the critics said

Praised as an entertaining and crisp hour featuring impressive magic and musical backing, though international reviewers noted that local Argentine cultural nuances and Spanish puns can be lost in translation.

In the room: Void of a live crowd due to pandemic filming constraints, relying on automated camera sweeps and pre-recorded laughs.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: bbfc.co.uk, rottentomatoes.com, leisurebyte.com, nuxt-movies.nuxt.dev, tvguide.com, dailysia.com.

Backstory

Filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic without a live in-person audience, adapting to empty venue conditions with revolving cameras and pre-recorded laughter.

Details

Released
Runtime
68 min
Where
Netflix
Director
Pablo Faro
Topics

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