Blood Wedding
Federico Garcia Lorca, in a version by Ted Hughes
Directed by Flavia Corina di Saverio
Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington
Star rating: 3
Of course Lorca is a 20th century theatrical monolith. He is as revered in Spain as Shakespeare is in Britain and in both cases the fame is global and rightly so – especially in view of his untimely death at the hands of a Fascist death squad at the age of 38. At least Shakespeare died in his bed.
Nonetheless Blood Wedding, one of his three world-renowned achievements, was – and remains – a strange play. It begins as a reasonably conventional danger-charged domestic tale fraught with threats of feudal violence and illicit relationships in rural Spain in the 1920s. Then, in its final third, it races off into the woods, reinvents itself as a densely mysterious poetic piece complete with a talking moon, an allegory for death in the shape of a peasant woman (straight from the Brothers Grimm), incantations, both spoken and sung and escalating surrealism. Lorca was, after all, influenced by Salvador Dali and symbolism was their trademark.
Flavia Corina di Saverio and her generally strong cast make a fair attempt at making sense of all this. Michael Neckham’s Bridegroom is warmly in love and then suitably puzzled/angry/ distressed when his glitteringly attractive bride (Sabrina Robinson – convincing) runs away with her former beau (Romain Mereau – charismatic). And Sangita Modgil, whom I’ve seen several times before in Tower Theatre productions, delights as the anxious, busy servant.
It’s the video design (Max Maxwell) and projection mapping (Catherine Shaw) which makes this production really atmospheric. We get olive trees (leaves wafting in the wind), vineyards and courtyards moving on the back wall along, later, with mysterious storms. And it’s pretty immersive, Sound design by Rob Ellis and composition by Vahan Salorian are excellent too – lots of rising chromatic and minor scales heighten the tension. And I don’t know whose idea it was to preface the play with the menacing sound of a knife being sharpened but it’s arrestingly effective. And, given the rising rates of knife crime in London at present, also feels startlingly topical.
