DONA ROSITA THE SPINSTER. To 24 April.
London
Dona Rosita The Spinster
by Federico Garcia Lorca Translated by Rebecca Morahan and Auriol Smith
Orange Tree To 24 April 2004
Mon-Sat .45pm Mat Sat 4pm & 1.8 April 2.30pm
Audio-described 17 April 4pm, 20 April
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 020 8940 3633
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 April
Small-scale, largely successful production.Lorca's not the only male writer to look at women's lives from youth to age. Arnold Bennett in a long novel, The Old Wives' Tale, Richard Yates in a shorter one The Easter Parade have both been successful. But Lorca brings a poetic mix of realism and symbolism to this story of a woman's voyage through disappointment and resignation.
On most levels, Auriol Smith's production is outstanding. At first the Orange Tree's small in-the-round stage is filled with furniture and folk like Rosita's uncle (Tim Hardy rich-voiced and pedantically insistent) caring more for his fragile roses than for any person, Rosita perhaps excepted. By the end references to cars and planes helping mark time shifts between 1885 and 1910 uncle's dead, Hardy ironically doubling as one of the furniture-removers when the family sells-up.
By then colour and song have gone; all is cold and muted. Deserted by her fiancée (here, a trendy 19th century nincompoop) Paula Stockbridge ages finely, the face setting and pale, while the body remains resolute. She's accompanied now only by old faithfuls, a brilliantly tetchy partnership by Sheila Reid and Anna Cartaret, Cartaret's Housekeeper asserting her servant status in quarrels to upset an angry mistress who regards her as one of the family.
There's sympathetic comedy as increasing exigencies straiten circumstances. It all points to a spinster's path in Spanish society of the time, emphasised by choric female families: the mystical Manola sisters, seen in the first act and recalled bitingly near the end, the black-laced, straight-backed spinsters with their mother and respectability for companions, sitting to tea opposite the two life-loving Ayolas.
It's in these choric sections, particularly the mystically-described Manolas, the production comes up against limits of space and resources. Close-up, reality works fine but physical proximity detracts from the poetic weave around the characters. So too, despite the admirable pianism of some cast members, song doesn't fully take flight.
Yet it's a small limitation in an understanding production that's both an individual's story and an expression of women's fate in a society which keeps that fate out of their own hands.
The Aunt: Sheila Reid
The Uncle/Workman 1: Tim Hardy
Dona Rosita: Paula Stockbridge
The Housekeeper: Anna Cartaret
The Nephew/The Youth: Michael Rouse
First Manola/First Spinster: Helen Anderson-Lee
Second Manola/First Ayola: Nicole Tongue
Third Manola/Second Ayola: Rina Mahoney
Second Spinster: Samantha Dowson
Third Spinster: Justine Koos
Mother of the Spinsters: Caroline John
Senor X/Don Martine: Ian Angus Wilkie
Workman 2: Kevin Leach
Director: Auriol Smith
Designer: Ti Green
Lighting: John Harris
Choreography: Nicole Tongue
Composer: John Dalby
Musical director: Justine Koos
2004-04-02 12:11:06