NAYRA. To 4 November.

London

NAYRA

Barbican Theatre (Pit) To 4 November 2006
Tue-Sat 7.45pm
Runs 1hr 20min No interval

TICKETS: 0845 120 7511
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 October

Colourful parade evoking life ancient and modern.
Some things defy description. Nayra defies just about everything else to people unfamiliar with the form of Spanish spoken and the Colombian cultural traditions and memories explored in the piece Teatro La Candelaria brings to London for a week.

I assumed, for example, that the staging, on a space surrounded by segments of audience seated between various bright-painted Virgin statues, suggests a leaf-strewn village square. But it’s actually octagonal and represents a Colombian “maloka” (a house of wisdom) or sacred space. There’s plenty of both sacred and profane (not always separable) about this show, where tradition and the modern co-exist.

A huge red-, then white-robed, bearded figure with attached halo sits with candles, flowers and a plastic bottle of Cola, looking askance as someone holds an icon hopefully towards him. Two people dance to tinny radio music. A man dressed in irreproachably colourful traditional peasant costume takes a call on his mobile ‘phone. The figure with spicily gelled hair, black clothes and chains biting her nails contemptuously could be a punk in any city round the world. The first of these, apparently, is mad, the last searching for her identity.

Watching Nayra (meaning “eye” or “what goes before”) as an outsider is like watching life go by somewhere off the tourist beat. Yet it’s more; the flow of events that follow the long opening procession make a purposeful assemblage, often mixing reality with the surrealism of a Bunuel film, unlikely events occurring with a mundane calm.

Given the mix of Paganism and Catholicism the statues aim to suggest (“The Virgin of the Road (under the transparent plastic) protects truck drivers,” a note informs: to what extent is this belief Pagan or Catholic?), the surreal streak’s hardly surprising. From one altar a two-faced virgin arises, rotates to show both visages, then sinks. There’s “a girls who sets light to her vagina” – a helpful note this, as there’s an element of displacement to the naked flame, reasonably enough.

Religious and political speakers pronounce from platforms, yet life goes on - perhaps the essential statement from this imaginative procession of living images.

Cast: Nora Ayala Anzola, Cesar Agusto Badillo Perez, Fanny Haydee Baena Moreno, Luis Libardo Florez Medina, Luis Hernando Forero Pineda, Rafael Eduardo Giraldo Galvis, Nora Gonzalez, Francisco Martinez Alvarado, Carmina Martinez Valdeblanquez, Shirley Martinez Pacheco, Fernando Emeterio Mendoza Lopez, Fernando Gonzalo Penuela Ortiz, Adelaida Otalora, Fabio Velasco Lomas, Patricia Elia Ariza Florez, Alexandra Escobar Aillon, Santiago Garcia Pinzon

Director: Santiago Garcia Pinzon
Design: La Candelaria
Lighting: Carlos Julio Robledo
Music: Hernando Forero
Assistant director: Patricia Ariza

2006-11-01 13:04:00