3.5/5
For most directors of symbolist plays, one of the first big creative decisions they have to make is perhaps how much realism they will imbue the piece with, since some realism is usually necessary to make the performance convincing, yet too much realism spoils the power of the writing. Directors in this country working with translated continental plays are particularly afflicted by this predicament, not least because the symbolist tradition always seemed a bit foreign to English theatre. Recent adaptations (and sometimes re-writings) of Lorca were a case in point: faced with the dilemma, some decided to circumvent the symbolist elements by transplanting the story to modern-day England, giving names to the archetypal characters, and swapping the stunning lyricism for lines that are plain, realist, and down-to-earth (but not quite poetically-earthy).
Personally, I am glad that the translator/director (Emma Nihill Alcorta) of this production did not take that easy way out but rather leaned into the musicality of the text. The beauty and the power of the original was properly conveyed to the audience and could be heartily felt by those who do not speak a word of Spanish such as myself. This alone was an impressive achievement. Moreover, to me it felt like Alcorta really believed in the translatability of poetry across time, cultures, and even language barriers, and had faith in her audience’s ability to appreciate poetry. Therefore, she took the risk of preserving more of the original than many other contemporary English adaptations. That gamble, I think, has largely paid off, and on the whole, Alcorta has done the original text justice.
However, the greatest weakness of this production also lies with its musicality. The creative team behind it clearly had an ear for music, and the flamenco-inspired original score by Elsa Vass-de-Zomba would have been a solid stand-alone piece, but the overlaying of music over much of the play was rather distracting, not least because it took something away from the lyricism of the lines themselves. To me, the best moments of the show were those when the music came to a sudden halt, less because the silence upped the stakes than because it allowed the poetry to shine through. Additionally, sometimes the carnivalesque quality of the music and the choreography did not mix too well with the Englishness in the acting, and the switching between English and Spanish was slightly disruptive of the rhythm of the play. Admittedly, some of the discordance could be blamed on technical issues: the tuning seemed a bit off during the first half of the show I went to, and the integration of music was significantly better in the second half. Therefore, perhaps the idea simply needs some fine-tuning to bring out its full potential.
That being said, the actors gave an outstanding rendition of the songs. Everyone who had a singing part clearly had a singing voice. In particular, the Maid (Rebekah Devlin) was clearly a seasoned singer, and the Moon (Lucía Mayorga)’s marvellously ethereal singing voice gave life to the lifeless symbol. Mayorga’s performance was equally convincing. Her haunting eyes’ intensity had an unique stillness, and she wielded the moments of silence like magic. The exquisite embodiment of symbolist poetry sent chills down my spine in the best way possible.
On the whole, the cast was really strong for a student production. The fight between the Bridegroom (Gilon Fox) and Leonardo (Gillies MacDonald) was expertly choreographed. The Bride (Thalia Kermisch) struck a good balance between the yearning for life and the longing for death by showcasing both fortitude and vulnerability. And the Wife (Francesca Knoop) effectively brought the full cycle of violence back together in the end by showing how women become jaded after outliving tragedies. The Mother (Siena Jackson-Wolfe), however, had some potential for improvement: the delivery of the lines was sometimes too rigid, and her elegant composure sometimes resembled an Oxford tutor more than a jaded old woman in rural Spain bound to the earth, the hearth, and the tragedy of endless natality and mortality. To her credit, however, this could be due to anxiety caused by the technical issues which disrupted the opening, which she, together with the other actors, coped very well.
(Blood Wedding is a play by Federico García Lorca. It was translated by Emma Nihill Alcorta and produced at the Oxford Playhouse between 4 and 7 June 2025.)
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