Review of: Blood Wedding, by Federico Garcia Lorca. Directed by Tom Williams

Courtesy of the Hampshire Chronicle

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Hampshire Chronicle 22nd October 2009

Blood Wedding rich. in themes

Great play that's based on a simple theme

THERE was an ambitious production of a great play in Winchester's Chesil theatre last week.

Like all great plays, there was a simplicity about it: a man and woman are fiercely drawn together, in spite of an arranged marriage. They run off together on the day of the bride's wedding and their ending can only be tragic.

Blood Wedding by Frederico Garcia Lorca is set in Andalusia and the actors play it like one long song, in which themes and symbols and obsessions are repeated, sometimes spoken, sometimes sung and the brutal logic of the small enclosed community of southern Spain runs its course.

It makes quite a change from the happy-go-lucky, hilarious dance world of Stepping Out, enjoyed at this venue earlier in the summer. Here is intensity, a strong sun, here is the poetry of an another age. And yet, it cannot be that far from us now.

Lorca himself died tragically when he was still young. What great plays he would surely have wrilten.

Blood Wedding, which ran at the venue until Saturday, , October 17, was greatly aided by a superb set, designed by Duncan Wilson with diaphanous white curtains and subtly suggested Spanish motifs. It makes a usually small looking stage seem much more spacious.

Full marks to the director, Tom Williams, and the actors for giving us a rich visual and auditory experience, where each speaks his or her lines as part of one long lament. KarenFitzsimmons led the cast as the Mother, a woman weighed- by tragedy from the first lines of the play. There are many fine performances and this play was a joy for anyone interested in theatre.

John Docherty

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