Amor fingido (Miniserie Deseo) (Spanish Edition)

In order to discern the dynamics of this type of intercultural encounter it is useful to compare this performance with the much celebrated and vilified adaptations of Richard II and Twelfth Night by Ariane Mnouchkine and King Lear by Da- vid McRuvie. The combination caused stunned mixed reactions.

I, too, was stunned by the eight-hour splendor of Mnouchkine's Shakespeares; but I also came away neither weeping over Richard nor smiling fondly at the comic lovers: The eyes said yes; the heart said no. La mejor Numancia que hemos visto. In general, few of the comments refer to the textual adaptation except to mention the initial baf- flement at the language barrier and the looseness of the adaptation.

The unquestionable emphasis on the visual aspects of the performance on the part of each of the reviewers, the comments on the looseness of the adaptation and the lack of literary protectionism give way to allegations of an interpretive freedom that some might find taints the flow of reciprocity in intercultural exchange. Chin, for instance, expresses his suspicions of intercultural adaptations and the imposition of the visual codes of the target culture as follows: To deploy elements from the symbol system of another culture is a very delicate enter- prise. In its crudest terms, the question is: Forcing elements from disparate cultures together does not seem to be a solu- tion that makes much sense, aesthetically, ethically, or philosophically.

What does that prove: That information about other cultures now is readily available? Do the constant com- ments on corporeal and visual details detract from the rendering of the text or do they betray a dialec- tical process between the cultures? In order to test the issue of cultural equivalence, I will contextualize the performances by applying more appropriate models of interculturalism for this particular case: The location of the target culture is not fixed: This fluidity not only foregrounds the dialogic nature of intercultural exchange but also takes into account the possibility of power disparity in the partnership.

To this narrative inspiration they add striking visual and acting techniques whose plasticity and rhythm evoke those of kabuki theatre while inserting novel anachronistic and ludic ele- ments that re-inscribe the mythical content of the play within experimentalist trends. One of the most important aspects of a pro- ductive intercultural exchange in theatre is that the encounter between the traditions be produced in the spirit of creativity and experimentalism in a manner that avoids culture essentialism and considers the artistic product a separate creation, with no ties to the search for essential national identities.

The director expresses his impressions on the delicate balance established between the traditions involved and innovation. He argues that their per- formance of Spanish theatre is full of its own reality and fantasy but articulated through purely Japanese gestures. Let me focus first on the commonalities. The Spanish Early Modern tradition provides a se- ries of parallelisms to kabuki theatre that may have similarly served as source of inspiration: It may be said to display, to different degrees: The Roman general is represented here by a figure in golden garb, sporting a baton in lieu of a sword whose terrifying gestures aragoto style contribute to an elaborate, erratic cho- reography of war.

The confrontation of the single character against the Numantians highlights the su- perior power of the single stretched menacing figure against the group of synchronized shifting grey shapes who barely escape his blows. Thus, the theme is bent to the kabuki tradition which is more geared to appeal to the senses than to reason. Yet, the minimalist plasticity of the setting, the stylized acting and the visual poe- tics of the most tragic moments the death by star- vation of a child, the compassionate murders, Baria- to's suicide, etc.

Por lo tanto, la norma social era la de quitarse la vida antes que recibir un dishonor. Immediately, he proceeds to lament the present state of Japan, now distanced from this moral code and immersed in a wave of random and unnatural violence. To his mind, there is but one cause for this chaos: In their statements we are reminded of how intercul- tural theatre inevitably entails a process of encoun- ter and negotiation between different cultural sensi- bilities the result of which varies depending on the degree of cultural reductionism or exploration at work.

It is this kind of production, meant to be at the cross-roads between cultures and to move between boundaries, that best shows the shortcomings of un- idirectional theories of interculturalism such as Pa- vis's. Indeed, I share his view that intercultural encounters need not imply colonialist agendas or prevent the possibility of reciprocity in intercultural exchange. Perhaps the challenge truly re- sides in allowing meaning to arise from the produc- tion's plasticity and aesthetics at work, despite cul- tural differences, exoticizing misconceptions, and textual constraints. Bravo Eli- zondo, in particular, adduces the Cervantine use of anachron- ism as an indication of his intention to criticize Spain's impe- rialist policies and offers an anachronistic reference to the ill reputed political advisors of Carlos V as illustration of his intent to unveil corruption in his government.

This message is more resounding than the superficial praising of sixteenth-century Spain" Other recent critics, such as Simerka and Lupher have coincided in the possibility of resistant, counter-epic readings for the play. As it has been widely noted, the first shimpa adaptations were very much connected to the colonial enter- prise. Versions of Othello, to name but one example, were adopted in this period to deal with the annexation of Taiwan Williams, et al. From these, worth noting are those by Ninagawa Yukio.

The other stage property perhaps worth mentioning would be the paper bal- loons that were introduced at several moments in the play: In particular, I have observed audience's unease and enthusiasm to adaptations of Calderon's autos that included commedia dell' arte and flamenco elements respec- tively.

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Theatre and the World. El cerco de Numancia. Kathakali King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe. De Armas, Frederick A. Eiroa, Sofia and Jorge Eiroa. Universidad de La Rioja, Per- forming National, Political and Social Identi- ties. U of Texas, Austin, La Numancia de Cervantes. The Ambivalence of Imperial Discourse: Lo, Jacqueline, Helen Gilbert. Romans in a New World: U of Michigan P, July 11, July 15, The Intercultural Performance Read- er. Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture.

Watsuji Tetsuro's Anthropology and Discussions of Authenticity. Counter-epic Literature in Early Modern Spain. Pennsylvania State UP, Entre estas obras hay un grupo dedicado a temas teatrales; dos loas: El poeta y El ves- tuario. De forma resumida el intercambio entre Pupilo y Manuela es el siguiente1: Loco estoy, ciego estoy, estoy corrido. Ya yo adivino su cuidado; es porque el buen Gaspar nos ha faltado […] P: Mayor es mi pena.

Nada de eso M: Por supuesto con una dama no basta, hay que repetir el experimento, y otra vez no se lo cree: Es necedad exquisita, que callan como unos santos. Curiosamente, de Escamilla, el otro gracioso presente es del que no se vuelve a decir nada que lo caracterice. Esta es la primera obra de Moreto que conocemos y es aproximadamente de Los estudiantes pobres llevaban gorra en lugar del som- brero… Y hasta cierto punto Moreto juega con esta licitud del teatro para justificar la burla de su protagonista. La siguiente en entrar es Manuela de Escamilla.

Nadie se salva de la burla, autor, actores y poeta, todos ven reflejados sus defectos y virtudes. University Press of the South, Por ello, al comparar las siguientes tres traducciones de la obra Lo fingido verdadero de Lope de Vega y Carpio: Acting Is Believing por Michael D. Una comedia tengo De un poeta griego, que las funda todas En subir y bajar monstruos al cielo; El teatro parece un escritorio Con diversas navetas y cortinas.

La segunda intenta transformar la obra, utilizando el lenguaje coloquial moderno. No hay muchas diferencias entre las traducciones de McGaha y Petro, como veremos. Los traductores em- plean distintas estrategias en sus trabajos empezan- do con ser fiel a la letra, como el de Michael D. It is abundantly clear that the English text has, like the Spanish, been conceived as an acting version. Not that McGaha is not com- pletely loyal to Lope: I initially experimented with translating the play into English blank verse, but I found that my translation soon began to take on a monotony which was in sharp contrast to the spontaneity and variety of the original.

Where it seemed ap- propriate, I have tried to duplicate the rhythmic nature and sonorousness of the original. It is not the highest praise of a translation, particularly in the age of its origin, to say that it reads as if it had originally been writ- ten in that language.

Rather, the significance of fidelity as ensured by literalness is that the work reflects the great longing for lin- guistic complementation. White bread for sale, fresh baked, crusty. Good Caesar, we have done you wrong. Lower class charac- ters spoke Spanish. We are well accommodated. We talk against Caesar with no cause.

Yes, we need more money to buy bread Petro 4. Es que te llevo en el pecho. Cerca vive falsirena, bizarra napolitana; pero Anciana, falsa y sirena. Es tercera de los treinta.

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No vamos donde haya vieja. Son grullas que velan la gente moza. Y que pelan desde la barba a la ceja. To translate comedy—or occasional word- play within a serious text—the translator needs a sense of humour. The goal should be a pun for a pun and a joke for a joke, al- though it is not always possible to handle double meanings and laugh lines on a one- for-one basis. The translator thus resorts to a strategy of compensation: Is there a weapon with a fe- male name?

You bore us speaking like a Spaniard. En la de McGaha, se usa un concepto equivalente para la audiencia de habla inglesa: Your Spanish-style puns are a pain in the ass. Where will we go now so we can find a lonely woman? A month ago, three women arrived, their ages like instrument cords: Damn her to hell! They are cranes who keep watch over young people. And they pluck themselves from beard to eyebrow. Where shall we go now to find a woman alone?

A month ago, three women came by here, separated like fruit, into three ages: A nice, juicy age; and the second? Fifteen doubled; fifteen more than the first. And they pluck themselves from the chin to the eyebrows. The stupid whore, she fell for it! I nearly fell off for laughing. You stared him out, straight in the eye And when you said: Rosarda, a muse to amuse.

Mi pena es mucho mayor. Do I torment you so? So much, Rufino, that I may lose my life, because my loathing is bigger than your love. If you feel, Fabia, such torment loathing me, imagine my torment being loathed, for there is little difference between love and forgetting. My pain is stronger. If I cared about your complaints, I would answer you. Are you so determined, Fabia, to treat me with such rigor and be ungrateful to my love?

She who disillusions is not de- ceiving. Why do you call me Marcela if I am Fabia? To tell you the truth, to force your scorn to have pity on my mad love. What do you want me to answer?

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Returning my love will be your best answer. This is not in your play. Careful, the Caesar is watching. Begone, torment me no more. Do I cause you so much pain? So much, Rufinus, that I may be fat- al,for my hatred of you is greater than your love for me. Fabia, if hating me torments you so, imagine how I must suffer from your hate. There is as great a difference between my suf- fering and yours as there is between loving and forgetting.

My pain is much greater. Fabia, why are you so determined to treat me harshly and reject my love? I know very well, Marcella, that the reason why you treat me so unjustly is that you love Octavius. Genesius, are you acting? Why do you call me Marcella, when my name is Fabia? What should I answer? This is not in the play. Sin embargo, la de Johns- ton, aunque relata el mismo mensaje suena muy di- ferente: Genesius re-appears, dressed as a handsome youth, accompanied by Marcella, in the costume of a beau- tiful young lady.

Leave me alone once and for all! I seek only your happiness. You torment me with your love. I feel it everywhere I go. And you fill me up with hatred, a hatred greater than your love. If your hatred torments you so, Sweet Iulieta, it kills me. My pain and yours are worlds apart, as different as day and night, like being loved and being forgotten.

My hatred for you, Romeus, Corrodes my soul and blights my life. But you have never been hated; You do not know what it is to die, only to kill. Why do you call me Marcella? Caesar is watch- ing. McGaha traduce esos versos: Here ends the play of the supreme actor. Here ends the play of the best of ators. And so dies the supreme actor, the patron saint of all actors. Las fortunata morte di due infelicissime amanti che l'uno di veleno e l'altro de dolore morirono, con vari acciden- ti. Works Cited Baker, Mona. Emerging Patterns of Narrative Community.

An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet. U of Chicago P, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. An An- thology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Jeremy Robbins and Edwin Williamson. Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Essays in Memory of E. Riley on the Quartercentenary of Don Quijote Academia Editorial del Hispanismo. El arte nuevo de hacer comedias. A work in progress. Theatrical Translation and Film Adapta- tion: Multilin- gual Matters, Volume 29 of Topics in Tranls. In purely financial terms, there can be no doubt that this promise has been fulfilled, and with reference to comedia performance this has been manifest in a proliferation of festivals e.

This network allows productions of Golden Age drama to tour in a manner akin to the way in which pop and rock groups cross Europe to perform at different music festivals. In terms, of size, budget and prestige, Almagro nevertheless remains in a different league. Over the course of the Festival, the follo- wing productions based on and around plays by the three major Golden Age playwrights were staged: Lope and Tirso, Our Contemporaries? One of the first subjects to be raised at Almagro in the s was to what extent modern- day productions are faithful to texts written in the Early Modern period, and according to which criteria they ought to be judged.

His production of Marta la piadosa as a rock musical was a critical and commercial triumph that marked a paradigm shift in breaking with the tradition of staging the classics in an archaeological fashion. In the late s and early s, his Company Teatro de Hoy then sought to resuscitate lesser known Golden Age plays. The play, set in the mediaeval period, has an episodic structure rather than the kind of linear narrative more typical of the comedia. This favor is repaid with treachery as Juan persuades a Jewish doctor, Ismael, to poison the infant King Fernando.

His mother discovers the plan and she forces the hired assassin to drink his own lethal potion. The realm is, however, experiencing economic hardships and some of the nobles begin to conspire against her. Yet again, she emerges victorious and is merciful to her enemies. Then, with complete disregard for the unities of time, the Third Act shows a sixteen-year old Fernando about to take on his official role. In a long speech, his mother advises him on how to be a prudent and wise monarch; the King almost completely ignores this advice and pays hedence to flatterers.

These sycophants conspire to turn him against his mother with false claims that she intends to re-marry and that she wanted to have him killed as a child so that she could usurp his crown. Each Act almost functions as an individual entity as the heroine battles against both personal and political attacks. Lo digo con conocimiento de causa. The director appropriates this technique whilst noting that he and Tirso both relate the narrative to issues of Catalan separatism: In this context, the staging of a play that can clearly be interpreted as a paean to the unity of Spain is clearly not politically neutral.

It has, nevertheless, been staged around the Peninsula. There was lack of historical precision in relation to the wardrobe; whilst the nobles were in period dress, the other characters wore clothes that appeared to come from the s. Furthermore, there were brief interludes in which Japanese ninja figures danced on stage that, to my mind and eye at least, bore no relation to the principal action.

In this case, however, its presence was underwhelming; it was limited to rather amateur sound effects and pre-recorded contemporary and baroque music. From a theatrical perspective, the more traditional elements were the most successful. Effective use was made of this fairly standard medium-sized Italianate theater with three doors at the rear of the stage. After the interval, the doors were then reversed to showcase reflective surfaces that subtly communicated the vanity of the court once the Queen and the unity she supplied have been removed.

It was a brave move to stage a play requiring the presence of a young actor to recite verse; Antonio Palomo made a valiant effort as the King in his youngest incarnation, yet he struggled with multiple long speeches that were generally not edited for performance. Unfortunately, the adult members of the cast were no more accomplished in dealing with the challenges raised by the play-text.

There was a complete lack of subtlety in the depiction of actions and emotions. In a similar vein, Mauricio Villa, who played the adolescent Fernando, resorted to yawning repeatedly as his mother gave him advice in order to communicate his disinterest to the audience. In general, the cast gave little evidence of having internalized their roles, and appeared to be badly under rehearsed.

It would, for example, have been an interesting theatrical experiment to pick up on the stage directions at the beginning of Act Three: More substantially, the play- text is fascinating in the way that it constantly inter- rogates essentialist gender roles. In virtually every other re- spect, however, they were radically different to La prudencia.

Firstly, the practitioners involved were young and these projects constituted their first pro- fessional encounter with the classics. Although La prudencia is hardly a canonical play, it has been performed intermittently in recent years. Encontramos demasiados asesina- tos y demasiadas absoluciones […] Segui- mos comiendo delante del telediario como si fuera normal.

This was both the cause and consequence of its failure to engage with a perplexing and proble- matic seventeenth-century text. This ostensible indictment of male violence was presumably what attracted the Company to the play. The production stumbled, however, due to their inability to distinguish between poetic and historical realities.

Los comendadores has subsequently troubled critics not only from an ethical perspective but also in terms of how exactly it would have worked on stage in a seventeenth-century corral, a question that needs to be taken into account at least by anybody seeking to resurrect it in the twenty-first century. He, nevertheless, spends insufficient time or effort tending his household as his prime concern is gaining favor and seeking approval from a series of male authority figures. These men are noble in title only; they are cowardly opportunists in search of sexual relations predicated on lust.

This prompts a vengeance of biblical proportions as the Venticuatro slays his wife and her accomplice alongside their lovers, servants and pets before returning to boast of his resolution to the King. It has often been assumed that the play is a particular macabre celebration of traditional Spanish patriarchal values, and was therefore designed as a form of moral exemplum likely to be anathema to the modern-day spectator.

The problem with this interpretation, as Melveena McKendrick notes, is that: If cowardly nobles, randy noblewomen and an unstable, insecure Veinticuatro represent the traditional values of Spain, then this play is indeed a celebration of them. This is unquestionably a sordid play, its air heavy with sex and the threat of violence, its action strewn with suggestions of ridicule and burlesque which finally explode into the sensational mayhem of its ending. These considerations were bypassed in a production that was unwilling to take the potentially comic dimension of the play seriously.

Sadly, this often meant that it was often the performance rather than the incident it was meant to enact which teetered on the edge of the ridiculous. The play-text was performed virtually in its entirety; this was symptomatic of a remarkably non-committal approach that depicted this contentious classic as neither a comedy nor a tragedy.

This resulted in a production lacking a coherent aesthetic that was both confused and confusing. These references would presumably, therefore, occasion bewilderment amongst those spectators not already familiar with the play. The production did admittedly remain loyal to its avowed purpose by highlighting some of the attitudes that underline violence against women. Rodrigo, the black slave played here by a white actor was elsewhere seen molesting a female servant whilst lecturing her on the need for moral rectitude thereby highlighting the frequent double standard applied to male and female chastity.

Nevertheless, these individual scenes were never developed and the latter was both illogical and incongruous. It is not clear how a black slave would have had the power to sexually pursue a female Spanish servant woman, whilst his actions also undermine his function as an intransigent moral compass. Why, for example, in a production that is set in the fifteenth-century, was there a pianist on stage and why were loudspeakers employed whenever a character was summoned by an authority figure? The overall impression was of an unfortunate collision between historical moments that did justice to neither the seventeenth- nor the twenty-first centuries.

Once again, however, its engagement with the play-text on which it was ostensibly based was tenuous. She is romantically linked to Dinardo, a Duke in charge of the army; the couple is united by their lust for power. Antonio is an obstacle to their ambition for he is a popular prince and legitimate heir to the throne. They therefore resolve to poison him with a potion that will turn him mad and thereby provide the justification for them usurping his power.

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Hence, for example, the production opened with what we presumed to be a funeral as all the characters were dressed in black. The Duke wore red shoes and brandished a pair of sunglasses whilst virtually all of the characters appeared to be drunk as they consumed from water bottles that, we were led to assume, contained liquor of a more intoxicating variety. In the same way that Calixto Bieito set his English-language version of Hamlet in a nightclub, the idea seemed to be to use a seedy environment to communicate the decadence of a corrupt court.

Aladro claims in the program that Lope employs this corrupt demimonde as a metaphor for the morally and spiritually bankrupt Spanish monarchy and that: Lope himself was a fellow wise enough to play the fool, that is, to see the possibilities within pretend madness to undermine and criticize the apparently sane world in which he lived, but also to be clever enough sufficiently discreto to camouflage his astuteness with a mask of simpleza. The comic elements did, at least on the night I attended, prove very popular with the audience. They delighted in exchanges such as the one between Antonio and Rodrigo that takes place after the latter has revealed the nefarious plan to intoxicate the former: I do, however, wonder whether the production might actually have been better if they had undertaken a more radical overhaul of the play and rendered it in prose.

The actors struggled with metrics, and their stilted delivery of seventeenth-century verse clashed with interpolated modernisms such as the airing of songs by Prince and Celine Dion through the loudspeakers. Lucinda attempts suicide when she incorrectly believes that her lover has died. Her brother nevertheless reveals that the potion she has ingested is not lethal, as it is merely a soporific he prepared to drug the husband of a woman he has been pursuing!

Prior to this uplifting conclusion, Lope nevertheless introduces a series of potentially sinister complications. Most serious amongst these is a Sultan laying siege to the city; his terms for surrender include the sacrificial offer of the bodies and souls of their young males. Even this scenario was played for laughs on stage. His illicit trade never takes place for Antonio raises an army that defeats the occupying enemy; this counter-attack was, in this production, staged in a unique manner.

The stage lights were dimmed as the theme tune to Star Wars accompanied the armed forces that entered from the rear of the church; these warriors were decked in Darth Vadar outfits made visible solely by the fluorescent light sabers that overcame the enemy with little resistance! This victory paved the way for a comic resolution in which the audience was held rapt as the light sabers proved their versatility; they were used both to bless the union of Antonio and Lucinda, and to issue merciful judgments against the vanquished forces.

It was clear by this point that the production had little or no relation with either Lope or the socio-political realities of seventeenth-century Spain evoked by the creative team in the program. I am loath to be dismissive of any performance that supplies a fun and entertaining evening of theater. However, in my role as an academic with a vested interest in comedia performance, it does raise some unsettling questions. Why, irrespective of its not inconsiderable merits, was it felt necessary to simplify the play-text to the extent that it had little relation to either Lope or the socio-historical context in which he wrote in order to appeal to and engage an early twenty-first century audience?

In my view, one of the defining hallmarks of a faithful and successful dramatic representation of a comedia is if, after seeing a performance, we are unable to read the play-text in the same way that we had previously. According to this criterion, none of the three productions cut the mustard. A lack of directorial vision and the inability of the actors to inhabit their roles or master Castilian metrics meant that the productions occupied a confused liminal zone that was not anchored in any concrete socio-cultural reality and failed to do justice to either the past or present.

Consequently, the productions were hardly good advocates for Lope or Tirso being our contemporaries. Nevertheless, in the s and s, there was a rapid decline in the number of productions — largely as a result of the narrative being indelibly linked with Francoism — but there were signs of a resurrection by the turn of the century. In addition, there were two major productions of the work attributed to Tirso. Criticism was exacerbated by the fact that it was staged at the most prestigious venue, the stunning partially open-air Antigua Un- iversidad Renacentista, at the height of the Festival between 28 June and 6 July.

A grandiose pre-recorded score based on Mozart was augmented by live on-stage voices, and Fran Perea was cast in the lead role as a result of his vocal as well as his acting abilities. There does appear to be an increasing com- mercialization of Almagro that is perhaps indicative of broader changes in theatrical production.

However, changes do appear to be afoot in this regard. Galoppe; McKendrick, Women 31 , the decision to focus heavily on El burlador is initially perplexing. It is, however, possible to argue that this may, at least in part, be the conse- quence of hermeneutical practices rather that the text itself. Susana Pendzik noted, for example, in that most critics focused too insistently on the masculine anti-hero: In line with this appraisal, the pro- duction envisaged the relationship between Don Juan and women to be a metaphoric indictment of wider social practices.

On a visual level, the production focused on the female characters from the outset. The opening scene con- sisted of the four women who will later be tricked by Don Juan emerging on stage. Gala, Mandrell , relies on verbal more than physical seduction,. Don Juan se drogaba, seguro. Are we perhaps mirones taking pleasure from looking at the spectacle of the castigo of women who have dared exercise their sexuality and eroticism?

Such scenes often encour- aged the spectator to take a vicarious and voyeuris- tic pleasure in the on-stage action exacerbated by the arrangement of this large theatrical space. The raised seating meant that no member of the au- dience was physically that close to the on-stage ac- tion, and yet we were all afforded an unobstructed aerial view. They struggled to concen- trate, and were visibly bored for much of a perfor- mance that lasted two hours and contained no inter- val.

One problem with striptease and sexual titilla- tion is that, like Don Juan, it often promises more than it delivers; relentless activity can easily lapse into tedious repetition. That this trait will be repro- duced in the dramatic action looms over any pro- duction of a play that ostensibly lacks the structural unity and cohesion of many comedias. This experiment worked well in many re- spects but this is not to say that such extensive cos- metic surgery is a necessary prerequisite for El bur- lador being staged successfully.

However, even on its own terms, this journey was not staged at all imaginatively. More substantially, the best road movies involve emo- tional engagement as well as physical displacement. A reduced cast of six resulted in many actors playing multiple roles, whilst the bald Antonio Gil, who played a physically decrepit Don Juan in need of walking stick, appeared to be older than the actor playing his on-stage uncle. Modern-day practitioners also need to be ingenious in their depiction of the character, especially if they choose not to invest the seducer with the arms of physical attractiveness.

As the narrative progressed, it becomes increasingly clear that what initially appeared to be a seductive and lively nocturnal demimonde was in fact sordid and desperate. The various seductions were therefore framed as being degrading for all concerned. Hence, for example, there was a tragic and desperate bathos to the way in which the women who have been tricked appeared to be increasingly under the influence of drink as the narrative unfolded, as did Don Juan when he contemplated his imminent death. The actors delivered their lines in an accom- plished manner that was sensitive to the specific exigencies of individual scenes and characters.

This technical prowess allowed Jemmett to emotionally modulate the production in a precise manner; less successful, to my eye and ear however, was his decision to introduce popular mu- sic to punctuate the action. The narratives of these lyrically sophisticated songs did, as their titles suggest, have relevance to the play, and I enjoyed hearing them. Nevertheless, their inclusion was anachronistic in the context of a non-English speak- ing country where reggae and ska have never had mass appeal. This soundtrack was representative of an ac- complished production sabotaged by a desire to be irreverent.

This was evident, for example, when Ana and Don Juan rehearsed a number of sexual positions for the amusement of the audience before he disappears up the folds of her skirt. This was a relatively rare attempt to familiarize children and adolescents with Golden Age drama.

A running length of an hour allowed for approximately twenty minutes to be dedicated to each play, with emphasis placed on the rudiments of their respective narratives. These were interspersed with a series of lively activities a young man doing back-flips; an acrobat juggling balls; a rather unexpected conga etc. It was an amusing and lively production well suited to its predominantly youthful demographic; although I hardly constitute its target audience, I do nevertheless sense that it would have benefited from being less repetitive and more tightly structured.

This helped make the play accessible whilst implicitly advancing the plausible theory that rap is the closest modern-day equivalent to verse. In all three plays, the narratives were described rather than performed, and the actor proceeded to recount the story of the Countess of Belfor and her ambitious secretary. In the previous section, I discussed productions of El burlador but all three of the comedias referenced were performed during the course of the Festival. In performance, its success was largely grounded in the intensity and precision of the psychological charge that circulated between the characters, actors and spectators.

This was facilitated by the use of ensemble actors and the apron stage in use at the Swan theater in Stratford. As a result, the RSC was able to avoid the trap into which many, although by no means all, Spanish productions fall: Unfortunately, Boswell proved unable to replicate this success with the Spanish production, which seemed a pale imitation of his earlier produc- tion. Even the actor who played Teodoro see- mingly had his hair styled so that it bore a striking resemblance to Joseph Millson who had played the lead role in the British staging.

The gag whereby Ricardo had a servant produce flowers whenever he saw Diana that had worked so effectively now felt tired and labored. Whether it was as a result of the skills of the actors or possible difficulties in communicating with Bos- well, the acting was generally far inferior to that of the RSC production and there was a virtual absence of either dark sexual passion or the pace of comedy.

The mere existence of this Spanish- American production previously staged in New York, and whose sponsors included Amnesty Inter- national, bears testament to its international stand- ing as do the plans to develop this production into a film. Gabriel Garbisu, for example, di- rected a version at the Festival that rather clumsily sought to make analogies with military intervention in the Middle East.

This production was more accomplished and constituted a brave attempt to bring a very challeng- ing play alive in a modern-day setting. Neverthe- less, in its desire to reiterate its contemporary relev- ance, it tried to include too much and lacked cohe- sion.

Effective use was, for example, made of mod- ern technology and much of the music and visual images was moving, yet their effect was often blighted by a lack of directorial vision. Near the be- ginning of the performance, Astolfo wrote Estrella an e-mail in real time; its contents were projected on a large screen at the rear of the auditorium.

In this message, he stated their respective claims to the throne and suggested that they join forces in order to gain power. Whilst this was an imaginative way of incorporating a classical narrative into the con- text of a modern-day political intrigue, it did not withstand close scrutiny. Firstly, Astolfo may be a Machiavellian operator but he would never be so unsubtle as to frame his claim and designs in such explicit terms. Secondly, even if he were to do so, it would be foolish to use electronic form as his words could so easily return to haunt him.

This is a distinct possibility as it is his first overture to Estrella, and he therefore has little idea of how she will respond. Wheeler A tendency to be over-explicit and facile was present elsewhere. Take, for example, a scene where Basilio was depicted as a twenty-first century American President. The politi- cal connotation would be clear enough without foo- tage of prisoners in boiler suits from Guantanamo being shown on the large screen. The acting was, in general, rather over- wrought. This was particular problematic in the case of Basilio where Gerry Bamman was portentous and uninten- tionally comic in his style of delivery.

The Maestre, for example, did not appear. The apparent lack of professionalism on display did not bode well but, fortunately, it soon became evident that this was a staged rehearsal. Following this, the actors debated the inclusion of the scene and the merit of even performing the clas- sics at all. The scenario was compared by one of the male characters to the contemporary dilemma faced by a local mayor when a man kills his wife or girlfriend on the day of the town fiestas. Against the claim that they are allowing the murderer to perpetrate two crimes the first against the victim and the second against the town if they cancel the festivities, one of the actresses protested that they would not peddle this argument if they were the victim.

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In general, the meta-theatrical elements of the play were performed in more naturalistic and luminous lighting while the scenes from Lope were characterized by darkness and strong red and blue lighting. Costume wise, the actors frequently donned specific garments for set scenes and removed them for rehearsal sequences but no strict demarcation was established. Esteban, for example, wore a leather jacket throughout the wedding scenes. This may have been a deliberate attempt to subvert any folkloric subtext that is often associated with productions from the dictatorship period; the songs were nevertheless delivered with a verve and bonhomie that could rival any production.

It initially appeared as if the play would end without the inclusion of the Catholic Monarchs. A debate ensued and a number of arguments were brandished: These more subversive interpreta- tions appealed to the fictional actors whose real-life counterparts then completed a circular structure by performing the scene with which the production had begun but in a more professional manner.

As Darci Strother notes, the absence of prior knowledge that is assumed by the production could jeopardize a production of this kind in performance. She nevertheless concludes that, in the context of Almagro: Strother, I echo this sentiment and applaud what I consider to be undoubtedly the best production at the Almagro Festival as a result of its ability to facilitate communication between both the stage and auditorium, and the seventeenth- and twenty- first centuries.

To put this context, the neighboring Olmedo Festival had a modest , Viloria. It is unfortunately beyond the remit of this article to discuss this ambitious production. For a detailed review of this production, see Martin This then inspired him to work on a modern-day version of the play that he staged with a cast made up of both fellow stu- dents, and actors cast from elsewhere Consulted on 31 July Silvia Abascal, who was excellent in the role of Finea in the recent film version of La dama boba, — for which she won the best actress award at the Malaga Film Fes- tival — also auditioned for the role.

Works Cited Amestoy, Ignacio. Wheeler de Armas, Frederick A. Barcelona, de agosto de Alexander Samson and Jona- than Thacker. El bur- lador de Sevilla and critical transitions. Bucknell University Press, A Study of the Mujer Varonil Cam- bridge: Samarkanda Tea- tro, So far, he has directed five comedias, including four by Lope de Vega. The Donmar Warehouse is one of the top theaters in London. Could you talk about the process of getting Life Is a Dream produced there? It had been a play he had been interested in doing, so when I mentioned that play, alarm bells rang for him.

It felt like absolutely the right work to do, given my history with the Spanish Golden Age. We were both interested in producing inside a small space a play of epic proportions, certainly in terms of ideas. You can create a really wonderful theatrical experience and get the audience inside a kind of crucible. The Donmar is so small and so quick to sell out, that you feel privileged just to sit there. It took nearly two years to get from the initial conversations to production.

Translating from Spanish to English, from one period to the present, from one culture to another is a negotiation. Life Is a Dream is a particular kind of play that taps into traditions of tragedy, yes, but also taps into fairy tales. I was adamant that the play should be in verse because of the heightened nature of the writing.

The play itself is a poem. And Segismundo is a prince.

And he is a prince. But the characters are all in the same register. This is really important to the heightened nature of the play, to its discourse, to the atmosphere that is created through the language. So it was about finding a translator who would be comfortable writing a contemporary English verse version. For me, always, it is only about the mode of communication between actor and audience and the drama of that moment. The Donmar has a tradition now of commissioning new versions of these plays from contemporary writers. And we absolutely wanted to put this play into the hands of a proven dramatist like Helen Edmundson.

And she had already done adaptations of other plays. You said you commissioned a literal translation from the Spanish. At that point, did Helen turn the prose translation into verse? Because she has no Spanish either. She had written some song lyrics before and some of her writing has a heightened quality to it, but she had never written in verse before. She was teaching herself to write verse as she was writing this play! She did a wonderful job. It was a great debut as a verse writer. When I was listening to it, at times I was thinking: So this is poetry.

Not until one looks at it on the page does one realize that definitely, the whole thing is verse. I always urge my actors to make verse sound like prose. You have to somehow be so fluent with the language that it sounds free and can sound like prose—as a way of trying to make it live. We had to create a form unique to itself, so that the English ear was hearing something that had an otherness to it. We used an octosyllabic line. Those two beats that are lost on the verse line do an interesting thing to an English ear that is so used to the iambic pentameter.

That shortness actually draws the English ear towards the action. You never come to the end of the line, you keep on going. The thought travels through the verse. We played around in the scene where Basilio the king is being persuaded to go into battle. Suddenly the play—it expands. What had been a domestic situation becomes a global conflict, and the world goes to war. It affects more people. Speaking of universality, you made the Donmar stage seem just huge.

The designer Angela Davies and I knew instinctively that we wanted to hold onto certain principles of the corral. So, bare stage, very few props, almost no furniture. Really just a floor and a wall. And so the evening would be about the actor and the word. I knew we wanted to play something within the center of the space that had resonance to it.

The astrolabe is the mysterious golden chandelier that hangs high over the audience and contains a sort of perforated lamp, and golden rings eventually release themselves around the lamp. And then I wanted to use the back wall of the Donmar, a very famous wall that kind of pushes the action towards the audience.

The bricks in that wall are soaked with years of these plays, but also with the history of that Victorian building, which was a warehouse before it was a theater. The bricks themselves have a great kind of resonance. Because they are all handmade. They are very human and the scale of them is very human, so we wanted to hang onto that detail. Angela Davies had this wonderful idea—to gold leaf the back wall. We could move from one scene to the next with great elegance and fluidity and speed.

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Because of a couple of really carefully chosen elements—the gold, the astrolabe, a chair for the throne, and a chain—, we were able to tell the story of each scene. The space got bigger as the play went along. Also, you realize then that the chandelier overhead has released its rings, so that it does closely resemble an astrolabe, or maybe the circulation of the planets.

So, that back wall was the wall of the palace, it was the wall of the prison, then suddenly it was a gigantic map—a strange, surreal map of the world—across which we were going to wage war. You noticed it late in the play because we started to light it differently. And when the play went to war, suddenly that gold was drenched with a blood red. You also used the spaces off stage in really interesting ways. Stage right, at the extreme edge, there was a space covered over with bars that represented the prison cell at times.

It functioned like a reja in the corral de comedias. Stage left, again at the extreme edge, there was another two- story set of bars, with the musician hidden behind them in darkness on the upper story. The idea of a caged figure stayed with Angela Davies and me right from the genesis of the project. So, the play ends with another jailed figure in the tower. And by having our musician Ansulman Biswas also in prison, behind the bars at the side of the stage, I wanted to underline that fact. The sight of him, and his voice, work subconsciously on the audience. That was a conscious choice, actually, in casting Dominic as Segismundo.

Because we could have gone with a very different physicality, but that character needed to have quite a dominating, dangerous physical presence, so that we genuinely fear for the safety of those people in the palace when the beast is released. At times, your Segismundo seems aware of his strength, and sometimes not at all. He takes the servant and throws him over the balcony. You had that dish of water on the floor—one of the very few props in the production—, and at one point Clotaldo snaps his fingers and demands that dish, and Segismundo is immediately submissive.

It was like Stockholm syndrome. You developed a Segismundo that had tremendous variety in his personality and all of these contradictions. So, for example, this jailer who becomes the father in his life has a very potent relationship with him. And because of the sense of betrayal that Segismundo feels towards Clotaldo and the rest, we wanted to see something that was instinctually submissive.

That jailer was a man he would subjugate himself to and a man he was frightened of. When Dominic and I were rehearsing, we read about the recent, extraordinary cases of children who had been imprisoned by a father, most notably the two cases in Austria. Both those women had been imprisoned, in one case the whole of her life in a dungeon. This is the worst read of the series so far and I will not be finishing it. May 05, Shxrxn rated it it was ok.

Bright, clear and beautiful. From the moment I saw it, I knew it belonged on your finger and that I wanted to be the one to place it there. Too good to be true. You had to push back and fight for what you wanted. Jan 24, Melissa Maxwell rated it it was amazing. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I loved and hated this story throughout the book. Sabrina and Gavin are attracted to each other but they both have pasts that hold them back from fully loving the other. Sabrina never had love from her parents and the first guy she slept with got her pregnant but really did not truly love her.

The only people who cared for her was her grandmother and grandfather "pops". Gavin wants some land that his grandfather lost in a poker game I loved and hated this story throughout the book. Gavin wants some land that his grandfather lost in a poker game but in order to get the land he needs to marry Sabrina. The more he is around Sabrina the more he likes her but he still thinks after a while a divorce will happen because he is never around.

She learns on her wedding day of the deal but Gavin tells her it is more now and she believes him. She realizes she is pregnant and when she tells him he reacts badly. It takes talking to his brother Blake to realizes he is hopelessly in love with his wife. Aug 22, Maura rated it it was ok Shelves: Gavin Jarrod, a construction engineer working for his family's resort discovers that Henry Caldwell owns a mine and several acres right smack in the middle of their resort land and right where they plan to build a new lodge. So he approaches him to purchase - but the old man isn't interested in selling unless Gavin agrees to marry his granddaughter, Sabrina.

Gavin is determined and he's attracted to Sabrina anyway, so he agrees. He begins to woo her and successfully convinces her to marry him wi Gavin Jarrod, a construction engineer working for his family's resort discovers that Henry Caldwell owns a mine and several acres right smack in the middle of their resort land and right where they plan to build a new lodge. He begins to woo her and successfully convinces her to marry him within a week, despite the fact that Sabrina is reluctant to love again.

But she does and when she discovers the deal, she's heartbroken. But Gavin is able to convince her that he really wants the marriage, although his plans include a short-term marriage, but she doesn't need to know that yet. But when she gets pregnant, those plans go out the window, Sabrina learns the truth and Gavin has to face the fact that he can't live without her. This was well written, but I didn't connect to any of the characters and certainly didn't agree with any of their decisions.

Gavin was something of a snake, willing to marry and more or less abandon Sabrina just for some land and some sex. Even knowing how much it would hurt her, knowing that she loved him, he was able to do it. I never did warm up to him because of it. The man did not feel enough guilt and he didn't grovel enough.

Sabrina was a bit of an idiot. She agreed to marry Gavin after only a week without talking about what their future would look like, where they would live, what he'd do for work and whether or not they planned to have children. Talk about taking a blind leap. And it killed me and pretty much enraged me that she was so forgiving when she found out that she'd been the purchasing price of a piece of land. At first she was hurt, but then she just realized that it was okay because she loved Gavin anyway and he still wanted her.

No backbone on that one. But the real villain who didn't get his comeuppance in this story is the grandfather. He was manipulative and conniving, setting up the scenario for his granddaughter to get hurt so that HE would have a little piece of mind about her future and wrapped up in the guise of a sweet old man.

He encouraged Gavin to seduce Sabrina, giving his approval for Gavin to LIE to Sabrina because that's an excellent foundation for a marriage and never once caring whether or not Gavin wanted Sabrina more than the land, just so long as Sabrina was happy in her ignorance. I just don't see how he could love Sabrina and still put her in that position. Someone needed to smack him. Jan 25, Rachelle rated it really liked it Shelves: Gavin Jarrod is trying to get a deed to a piece of land. The owner's condition is that Gavin marry his granddaughter.

Gavin is reluctant to wed but is more surprised as time goes on that he is actually in love with woman. Using as W for Alphabet soup. Jan 06, Ladyacct rated it liked it Shelves: Part 5 of 6 Jarrods' series. It was a delightful romantic story, with just a bit of drama to keep things interesting without becoming too much. Nov 01, Harlequin Books added it Shelves: May 25, Mem rated it it was amazing Shelves: D Nov10 The Jarrods 5. Elizabeth rated it it was amazing Oct 12, Robin Pagel rated it really liked it Apr 24, Hina rated it really liked it Jan 25, Nicole rated it liked it Feb 03, Bobbi rated it liked it Dec 31, Jennifer rated it it was ok Oct 30,