WHEN FIVE YEARS PASS. To 23 September.

London

WHEN FIVE YEARS PASS
by Federico Garcia Lorca translated by Gwynne Edwards

Arcola Theatre (Arcola 2) 27 Arcola Street E8 2DJ To 23 September 2006
Mon-Sat 8.15pm Mat Sat 3.15pm
Runs 1hr 55min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7503 1646
www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 September

A production with considerable rarity - and intrinsic - value.
When he wrote this play in 1931, Lorca was deep in with such surrealists as Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, and it doesn’t take long to show. Within seconds the Young Man (notice the fashionable, for the time, generalised name) in his house, with father and servant, is engaged in dreamlike events and it’s not long before poetic images colour the language, with dreamlike associations among characters, and time-slips in the action.

This is a love story, but a knotty one that doesn’t seek untying. How much Lorca’s commenting (in his early thirties) about love as he sees it around, how much working out his own confusions and sense of contradiction, is unclear. But the same could be said of Strindberg, and what makes this poetic play less popular than the Swede’s ‘big three’ is its use of Surrealism rather than Realism.

Any strange event (a dead cat talks to a dead child, for example) no sooner seems fitted into the scheme of things than it slides away. Though five years pass, these dead remain with us, inexplicable yet haunting. There are deliberate stumblings in the dialogue yet the cumulative force of all this is to give the final, strangest, image a climactic inevitability. A card game that might be an out-take from Un Chien Andalou, it’s fixed by 3 players who emerge to take on the Young Man, ending as he reluctantly surrenders his last card, an Ace of Hearts, to be stabbed through and cause his death.

It seems a natural outcome for the unsatisfied desires flowing from his Secretary to the Young Man, and from him to his uninterested Girlfriend, who calmly determines she’ll need to return his presents; played in a world of Harlequin and Clown.

The mix of reality and fantasy’s caught in Ben Stones’ design, which finds room in this small apace for several real objects, and a fireplace positioned in a cloudscape-wall out of Dali. Charlotte Westenra’s sympathetic direction matches the rooting realism and the flights of fantasy. It’s capably presented by a cast who compensate in willingness for moments of technical roughness.

Young Man: Mark Field
Old Man: Michael O’Hagan
John/Father/Harlequin: Gary Mackay
Secretary/Manikin: Lewis Barfoot
Friend/Football Player/Clown: Christopher Brandon
Girlfriend/Cat: Sophie Roberts
Child: Maurice Rowan Bishop/Barney Clark
2nd Friend/Maid/Mask: Caryl Morgan
Girl: Umit Caglaya/Nura Ibrahim

Director: Charlotte Westenra
Designer: Ben Stones
Lighting: Fiona Simpson
Sound: Nick Greenhill
Composer: Benedict Westenra
Costume: Sarah Grange
Movement: Imogen Knight
Fight director: Kevin McCurdy

2006-09-07 09:59:01