CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
Blood Wedding. By Federico Garcia Lorca. (Arts.)-1 Capture the Castle. By Dodie Smith. (Aldwych.) A MARRIED man carries off the bride at a peasant wedding in the high Sierra. The two rivals, bridegroom and ravisher, stalk each other in the mountains till they meet and fight to the death. The feud between their two families is resolved, for only the women are left. A simple tale :
" Vecinas : con un cuchillo, en un dia senalado, entre los dos y las fres,
se mataron los dos hombres del amor." "Neighbours, with a knife, with a little knife, at a given day, between two and three, the two men of love killed each other." A simple tale, but the meanings are hidden deep down in the structure and imagery of the poetry. It is not enough to say of this play that it is primitive, fierce or simply Spanish. The critic must try to accustom himself to the feel of a true sensation after his sensibility has been numbed by the wearisome sophistication of the West End stage. Once this adjustment has been made, analysis becomes possible. A series of oppositions runs through Lorca's play : the world of men, of horses and knives is opposed to the fertile world of women. `` Men. Men. Wheat. Wheat," says the Mother and the Bride's nurse talking of the wedding : "But, child, what is a wedding? A wedding is just that and nothing more. . . . It's a shining bed and a man and a woman." The importance given to the act of love in this play lies at the root of Lorca's imagery. To make men is for him on the same creative plane as to plough the land, to make wheat or grapes. Over against this prolific force of life are set the sterile symbols of the knives, of the thirsty moon desiring to be washed with the life of a man, and, uniting the two worlds, the symbol of the horse, the male symbol par excellence. It is because they are so full of primitive life, because they are riders of horses and lovers of women, because they can make children or wheat, that the two rivals are reduced to the sterility of the moon and the knives, to the bareness of the rocks. The horse represents the risk which must be taken if passion is to be generated. The knives are the penalty, the price that has to be paid. Therefore the horse is at one and the same time a life symbol and a death symbol, as indeed he is in the lullaby of the first act, where there is concentrated all the ambi- valence that the symbol carries throughout the rest of the play :
" Ay-y-y for the big horse
moving height of tragedy at present to be seen on the London stage. Alec Mungo as Leonardo represents the 'other half of the dichotomy. He manages to wear an air of passionate doom and in the scene in the mountains (where he is ably seconded by Rosalind Boxall as the Bride) he does very well indeed with what is essentially a diffi- cult part. Peter Hall's production deals almost entirely successfully with Lorca's impossible requirements. From the moment the play takes off into symbolism with the Moon appearing on the stage, the problem of production becomes a question of managing a tour de force. This Mr. Hall brings off; and both he and the audience arc rewarded by the result. Blood Wedding is certainly one of the most exciting things I have seen on the stage—even in the rather pedestrian translation used for the occasion. Now let the Arts follow it up with Yerma and The House of &manta Alba. Boldness is the only policy for a club theatre. This production shows that it is also the policy that pays off.
•
We all know what literary people are like. They have no money, they live in ruined castles and run about nude in the garden. Dodie Smith in her new play confirms all these suspicions and raises a few more. It appears that they also have daughters who are seen at their most elfin when dealing with the local representative of Cold Comfort Farm, Inc. Virginia McKcnna redeems a good deal (but by no means all) of the dia- logue by her charm. George Relph makes a good James Joyce manqué, and the set was pleasant. I am very fond of ruined castles, but nothing would induce me to return to
Previous page
