Lorca

There is a certain Iberican flavour at Lakeside this week and centre-stage of this Spanish invasion is Théâtre sans Frontières' adaption of one of Spain's great writers', Federico García Lorca, earlier works. Lorca: Amor en el Jardin draws on the playwright's 1929 play Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su Jardin (a mouthful of a title) which caused quite a stir, with the authorities confiscating the script - times and tastes have since changed! 

Written earlier than his more heralded works of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, the original play concerns Don Perlimplin, an older rich bachelor, and Belisa, his beautiful soon-to-be wife. They wed, yet despite Perlimpin's professions of love Belisa is soon looking elsewhere, including a ménage à six the night of their marriage. With touches of Chaucer's Merchant's Tale the cuckolded Perlimplin, who even awakes after their wedding night with horns, devises a plot in which his written love epistles would appear to come from a handsome mysterious admirer and for them to meet in the garden. When the meeting comes Perlimpin kills himself after revealing it was he who had sent the letters and it is now that Belisa realises that it is him that she truly loves. 

Théâtre sans Frontières' version plays this and a preface - on Lorca's life, loves and grasp of English (he knew 3 words in English: "bacon" "and" "eggs") - in a flat-pack, pantomined style which has mixed results. It is performed apace in Spanish with English surtitles, which are awkwardly placed high stage left, and which meant that at times the text was hard to follow, but the pacey physical comedy - especially that of Alicia Martel - was full of fun and supported the telling of the story. Martel's musical accompaniment and maniacal laughter were amongst the best moments of the night and Perlimpin's Mrs Doyle-esque servant Marcolfa, played by Sarah Kemp, had a scene stealing turn trying to place a candelabra on a high and awkward shelf. The metatheatrical mechanicals of the preface given to the piece added little to the actual understanding of the script but did move it away from just being the melodrama of a writer finding his feet in the early part of his career. 

The production is an ambitious attempt at bringing Lorca in the original Spanish to a UK audience - the crowd I was in was split between non- and Spanish speakers with the latter laughing far more. Whilst it was a fun and strongly-performed piece with a real physical dexterity, the source text was in comparison a bit limp and lacked any real drama to sustain the entertaining staging of it. This eventually made even these fun elements grate as we knew exactly where the script was going. It's a "must try harder" for the writer - who we know certainly did - and applause for the performance if not the picking of the play for Théâtre sans Frontières, who have recently received a major reduction in their funding. This show was a brave and out-there idea and if there is to be a variety in the languages we hear on our stages then I hope Théâtre sans Frontières can continue to explore foreign language work and bring it to UK audiences in a fun and engaging way.