Peter Viney's Blog

Blood Wedding
by Federico Garcia Lorca
Retold by Barney Norris

Directed by Alice Hamilton
Designed by James Perkins

World Premiere
A Wiltshire Creative / Up In Arms Production

Salisbury Playhouse,
Thursday 13 February 2020, 14.15

CAST

Teresa Banham – Helen, Rob’s mum, a divorcee
Emmet Byrne – Lee, Georgie’s ex, an Irish traveller
Reece Evans – Rob, the groom
Eleanor Henderson – Danni, Lee’s wife
Lily Nichol – Georgie, Rob’s fiancée
Jeff Rawle – Brian, the hall caretaker

I’ve seen Blood Wedding before, and it was before I started the blog. I think it was the Ted Hughes’ translation.  The Young Vic did another new version by Marina Carr last year.

This is a truly radical retelling, reimagined in a Wiltshire village. Lorca doesn’t get much of a shout in the credits overall, but doesn’t deserve more (if any), as this is not a translation of his 1932 play. It’s a new play with a reduced and different cast and is some miles away from Lorca. I just looked at the Penguin Plays literal translation of the original published in 1959. I could not have sat through that version. While Shakespeare had characters address the moon as O Moon in the Pyramus & Thisbe play-within-a play, he was taking the piss. Lorca has O evil Moon, O rising Moon, O sorrowing Moon and O lonely Moon in close proximity and they are addressing Moon, who is a character along with Death.

Barney Norris has an essay in the programme on setting it in Wiltshire and ongoing myths. I really don’t see why he name-checks Lorca, or uses the title. So the bride changes her mind at the altar / reception and runs off. The Graduate? Death at a wedding because of an ex. Lorna Doone? Norris even calls the ex-boyfriend Lee. In Lorca, only one character has a name, and that’s Leonardo.

It’s directed by Alice Hamilton who directed Barney Norris’s Echo’s End in 2017, also set in Wiltshire. Salisbury Playhouse has a great record of original productions, coupled with a great record of coupling them with local references. Quality … cast, direction, set … consistently match anything in the West End, though the theatre building is vastly better than anywhere in the West End, which is why it’s so poor that these excellent provincial theatres don’t attract all the national paper reviewers, especially as they can go on to provincial tours. Never mind, The Guardian and The Times get there, AND you get me reviewing them.

Salisbury Playhouse.  

Robert Jackman in his review for The Spectator makes a brilliant comment, and I agree absolutely!

Whether intentional or not, Norris has tapped into one of the big differences between regional audiences and London ones. Most punters at the Salisbury Playhouse aren’t drama aficionados who are swayed by accolades and broadsheet reviews. Many will be friends of the theatre who book ahead for the whole season in one go, willing to risk £15 on shows they’ve never heard of. Norris makes sure there’s something for all of them. In that way, Blood Wedding isn’t just a good play, it’s also an example of how theatre — as a cultural service — is meant to work. After the Brexit vote, much of theatre’s London-based high command waxed lyrical about the need to bring a divided nation back together. But it’s Wiltshire Creative, which commissioned this production, that has shown how actually to do it

L to R: Danni, Helen, Georgie, Rob, Lee. The moon was much less prominent from our angle (or they toned it down).

It’s set around the back doors of a run down village hall. We both liked the set very much. It was the stuff of church youth clubs when we were teenagers. The realistic village hall is surrounded by a circular structure. One review references a Spanish bull ring. Why? Then there’s the moon? Anyway, they basically close off the back of the set. We’re interested in the village hall, plus a cheap bench with graffiti, a wheelie bin / skip, and a bit of grass.

It’s supposed to be In Edington, a real place in the sparsely populated west of Wiltshire. Ron (Reece Evans) is about to get married to Georgie (Lily Nichol), who is four years older than him. He’s fancied her since school, where apparently she was the sexy alpha-female (think Maeve in Sex Education). He’s clearly naive. Georgie’s tragedy is that she’s lost that glow that made her so shimmering at school – she’s lost her job (we’re not sure why). She broke up with her ex-boyfriend. Things have faded for her.

They’ve chosen this remote and tatty village hall for the reception because it’s cheap and they want to get married soon.  Also Georgie was baptised there, though it’s twenty miles from home. Rob’s mum, Helen (Teresa Banham) is along to help choose the reception location and is dubious about Georgie. The major character is the widowed hall caretaker, Brian (Jeff Rawle) who suggests they want to get married “before the twelve week scan.” The early scenes play as comedy … and are very funny.

Rob (Reece Evans) and Georgie (Lily Nichol)

The problem is Georgie’s ex-fiance, Lee (Emmet Byrne), an Irish traveller. They split and Lee is married to Danni (Eleanor Henderson), and they have a baby with another on the way. Georgie and Lee still hold a torch for each other.

I bought the script at the theatre. The printed version is a work in progress, as the actors were given space to adapt and extemporise lines. In the script, Rob says fuck just once in the first scene. On stage it was about half a dozen with a couple more from Georgie. If you wander the streets of Wiltshire you will hear it more than once from the age group. Another we noticed is that Helen (the mum) talks about Rob’s ‘rejection complex’. In the text, Rob’s Where did you even read this? is stiff. In performance it was more like What magazine did you read that in? which got a laugh from the audience. The original line probably wouldn’t have.

On Wiltshire …  Blood Wedding by Barney Norris inevitably falls into comparison with the greatest Wiltshire play of all, Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth. That centres on a run down caravan, with an older man resident in it (Rooster) and younger kids gravitate there. Rooster is a Pikey (traveller). Here we have the run down village hall, with an old caretaker. He’s not a traveller,  but Lee (who is repairing the roof) is an Irish traveller. Perhaps Lee had a bit of tarmac left over from a job round the corner. The back of a village hall is familiar to the four younger characters as a place to hang out. An excellent scene is the monosyllabic Lee sitting up on the roof, until Brian comes out.

Up On The Roof: Lee (Emmett Byrne)

Accents … We shouldn’t have any problem following Wiltshire accents. Karen’s mother came from Cricklade in Witshire. My grandfather was on the Dorset side of the Wilts / Dorset border (the far better side) at Cranborne. We go to Wiltshire a lot. Emmet Byrne is Irish, as is his acting experience, so Lee sounds authentic. Eleanor Henderson as Danni, Lee’s wife had exactly the sound of the “army wives” on Salisbury Plain. She sounded totally real to us. The best scene in the play for me was where Danni and Georgie run into each other-they were in the same class at school, and Danni married Lee, who Georgie had rejected. Both actors exuded authenticity.

The rest tended to generic Mummerset. I think accent obscured articulation, especially for Teresa Banham as Helen who was noticeably softer and quieter than the others, and whose lines often blurred … she created the character well, but it was at the expense of line clarity (We were in Row M, quite a way back). When we both read her first scene speeches in the text the morning after, much of what she (allegedly) said was completely new to us.

On accent and on the theme of prejudice towards travellers (which is why Georgie’s parents disliked Lee), I don’t believe anyone in rural Wiltshire or Dorset outside of local council officials says “traveller.” The derogatory term in the play is pikey. Pikey covers Irish travellers and is derogatory for “underclass” or “chavs” in general, but probably not restricted to ethnically English Romany travellers. We just spent ten minutes discussing this.  We think Wiltshire would be “diddicoy” for a Romany (rather than Irish traveller). But enough on offensive terms!

Brian (Jeff Rawles) and Danni (Eleanor Henderson)

The first Act feels much more like a rural poor comedy than any kind of tragedy. That makes for a difficult switch into the more serious Act Two, which takes place after the wedding, to which the poor innocent Rob has invited Lee and Danni, knowing nothing of the Lee / Georgie relationship in the past. it will come out.

The tragedy in the original is the rival lovers killing each other with knives in the forest. Here it’s Lee and Georgie leaving in his car, chased by the groom, Rob. After the tragedy, which kills both Lee and Rob in a reported and distant fiery car crash which Georgie survives, we go into a long reported soliloquy which seems like an epilogue, and a portentous epilogue at that. This seems to lean towards the Lorca figure of Death or Doom. Brian is up on high (the roof disappears) blue lights appear, and we end with the ghosts of Lee and Rob climbing the roof, helping each other. This is well-acted, but disastrous to the play’s chances elsewhere.

The ghosts up on top. Brian below.

All those Wiltshire connections are highly positive … but this speech is far too Wiltshire specific in the lines, I know about the village of Imber, requisitioned by the army and Brian’s home where his wife and daughter are buried, but it won’t run elsewhere. Nor will the obscure history of Edington with references to Alfred The Great and a 16th century naked bishop. Yes, it’s a “Wiltshire Creative” production but they are closing off the play’s “mileage” outside its premier.

Nevertheless, that done, we thought it was all over. Beautifully delivery from Jeff Rawle as Brian. We all applauded vigorously. The end.

Then the lights came up on the village hall, the roof went back on, BUT our applause petered out as we waited for the curtain call and no one emerged  …  and instead we got a scene a year later with Helen and Danni about to lay flowers on the crash site … a descanso, as it’s now called …  then Brian, and then Georgie turn up. It does little for the plot. Oddly, Helen and Danni have bonded. They reject Georgie. And when it finished they got less applause than after that ghostly blue-lit apparent epilogue which was the natural dramatic ending.

It was the wrong plotting and narrative and it blew the play out of the water … I was knocking off two stars in my assessment. It’s a great shame. The construction of the last fifteen minutes skews the play badly. Did no one say That double ending really doesn’t work.? You can’t switch into an intoned heavenly epilogue in sudden portentous Lorca style, and leap back into reality.

OVERALL

There’s a very good play in there struggling to get out. It needed an editor / producer to intervene. I’d drop all Lorca references, find a new title … and I reckon it’s the Lorca connection that made him go for the elegiac scene with Brian on the roof. I’d drop the whole elegy and find another way of killing Lee and Rob. And end there. It struck me that the most likely character who’d be moving about, but have a young pregnant wife and a child, would not be a “pikey” (sorry) but a squaddie (soldier). Salisbury Plain is full of army bases, and getting married young gets them married quarters … houses … instead of barracks. You do see the army wives around, young, with pushchairs and strong Wiltshire accents. The squaddies are usually from elsewhere in Britain.

Act one was three stars veering to four. The end of Act two was one star.

I must add that neither of our next two theatre visits were as enjoyable or well done, and these were Endgame at the Old Vic and Caryl Churchill’s A Number at The Bridge. Salisbury beat both London productions.

***

PLAY TEXT

They charge a full £9.99 compared to the £2 discounted to £7.99 on Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard last weekend. I don’t object to paying full price, but it is an error. The theatre is not paying 33% to a retail bookshop, not up to 50% (probably) to Amazon. You can easily afford to discount the price. The Royal Court halves it. So while last Saturday, virtually everyone in the queue with me was buying a Leopoldstadt play text, I was the only one I saw buying a Blood Wedding play text. You cut the price, put it up front and sell lots.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

four star
Ben Kulvichit, The Stage ****

Norris doesn’t try to bend the feudal drama of Lorca’s original to his sleepy Wiltshire setting (neither male rival really has tendencies towards violence). Instead, his characters are plaintive and introspective, the play’s dramatic engine fuelled more by disappointment than by jealous passions.

Judi Hermann, What’s On Stage ****

three star
Kate Wyver, Guardian ***

But something is missing: the rage, the tug, the power of love that Lorca suggests. While this story doesn’t need the bloody violence to work, it needs a more powerful force than this production offers. The climax is delivered by narration rather than action, in a tell-not-show ending that reaches for the mythic in a way that jars and feels slightly preachy.

Sam Marlowe, The Times ***

One Minute Theatre Reviews, ***

The use of a kind of one man Greek chorus high up is undoubtedly dramatic, I found it too histrionic for this tale of ordinary people. I would have preferred the description of what has happened and the explanation of its significance to have been contained within the natural conversations. In other words, show rather than tell.

Don’t use star ratings

Robert Jackman, The Spectator

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

BARNEY NORRIS
Echo’s End, Salisbury Playhouse, 2017

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Yerma, by Simon Stone after Federico Garcia Lorca, Young Vic, 2017

TERESA BANHAM
The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter, Bath Ustinov Studio, 2018
Measure for Measure, RSC 2012