Blood Wedding
Jul. 17th, 2003 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night I went to Chelsea. The drive was rather exciting, with the on-ramp to Route 1 taking interesting turns under many layers of highway bridges in all directions, with much construction equipment around. Then it was over the lower deck of the Tobin, which I don't think I've done before... it's very high above the water (I wonder why?), and big in a way that made me feel I was in NYC, somehow. And then there were pretty historical buildings along the way to Mary O'Malley Park. Very nice (the drive back, looping around to find the on-ramp, showed some less pretty parts of Chelsea, however).
TheatreZone is putting on "Lorca in the Park," a production of Blood Wedding (Federico Garcia Lorca). Half the performances are in English, half in Spanish. Since my Spanish remains at Sesame Street level, I chose an English performance.
The first act was set in a variety of different houses, indicated by different props in a small, mostly open building with a painted backdrop. The drawback to this was the posts that interrupted the front of the stage; at some point during each scene a character was blocked from some of the audience's view. The audience sat around the front, some on blankets, some on folding chairs that were too high to see around. There was a man playing an amplified acoustic guitar, both during set changes and to accompany the songs, some of which worked well, while in others, the words were muffled, which made them next to useless. The song that worked particularly well was singing to the bride to wake up on her wedding morning, the guests coming and singing verses. At the party after the wedding, I was surprised to see that they included the dancing in the party... far off to the right and almost behind the audience.
This is the first production I've been to where the audience has had to move between acts. At the end of the first act, the audience was ushered to a grassy embankment overhung with trees. The four lanterns that had been hanging on the front of the building were taken along, and placed at the front of the 'stage'. Then for the third act, we again moved, walking down to the dock, and forming a circle for the end of the play, the lanterns this time marking out the two entrances to the middle circle. Here the play ended, after which all the actors bowed in a circle, facing outward.
The acting was mixed. I wondered if all the actors played the same roles in the Spanish production; some of them seemed to be more likely to be fluent in Spanish, while others gave no hint of bilingualism. I thought the actors who played the mother of the groom and the father of the bride (the only parents left) quite good, as well as the bride's house servant. The bride, though, didn't feel so convincing, which was unfortunate, since her emotions and motivations were key to the production. Perhaps that's why I didn't care so much for the play. Also, the dialogue is very flowery (literally as well as figuratively), quite poetical, which is something I'm not particularly used to. There was a lot of flower and snow and blood imagery, particular word choices that made me wonder whether there were particular things suggested by these phrases in Spanish, a reference to classic works, or folk sayings, or something.
TheatreZone is putting on "Lorca in the Park," a production of Blood Wedding (Federico Garcia Lorca). Half the performances are in English, half in Spanish. Since my Spanish remains at Sesame Street level, I chose an English performance.
The first act was set in a variety of different houses, indicated by different props in a small, mostly open building with a painted backdrop. The drawback to this was the posts that interrupted the front of the stage; at some point during each scene a character was blocked from some of the audience's view. The audience sat around the front, some on blankets, some on folding chairs that were too high to see around. There was a man playing an amplified acoustic guitar, both during set changes and to accompany the songs, some of which worked well, while in others, the words were muffled, which made them next to useless. The song that worked particularly well was singing to the bride to wake up on her wedding morning, the guests coming and singing verses. At the party after the wedding, I was surprised to see that they included the dancing in the party... far off to the right and almost behind the audience.
This is the first production I've been to where the audience has had to move between acts. At the end of the first act, the audience was ushered to a grassy embankment overhung with trees. The four lanterns that had been hanging on the front of the building were taken along, and placed at the front of the 'stage'. Then for the third act, we again moved, walking down to the dock, and forming a circle for the end of the play, the lanterns this time marking out the two entrances to the middle circle. Here the play ended, after which all the actors bowed in a circle, facing outward.
The acting was mixed. I wondered if all the actors played the same roles in the Spanish production; some of them seemed to be more likely to be fluent in Spanish, while others gave no hint of bilingualism. I thought the actors who played the mother of the groom and the father of the bride (the only parents left) quite good, as well as the bride's house servant. The bride, though, didn't feel so convincing, which was unfortunate, since her emotions and motivations were key to the production. Perhaps that's why I didn't care so much for the play. Also, the dialogue is very flowery (literally as well as figuratively), quite poetical, which is something I'm not particularly used to. There was a lot of flower and snow and blood imagery, particular word choices that made me wonder whether there were particular things suggested by these phrases in Spanish, a reference to classic works, or folk sayings, or something.