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Chilling chronicle of deaths foretold
Written on the eve of the Spanish civil war, Lorca's domestic tragedy is a brilliant allegory of the looming bloodbath, says MARY CONWAY
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Blood Wedding
Young Vic, London
THE REPUTATION of poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca is almost unassailable. While his plays are earthed deep in the Spain he knew so well, his language and surrealist imagery render him almost visionary.
And, given the nature of his death in 1936 at the hands of a Franco-inspired fascist death squad, his play Blood Wedding makes him almost a prophet of the civil war to come. Reeking of death, it’s a play charged with hatred and Lorca is quoted as saying: “In Spain, the dead are more alive than in any other country in the world.”
Capturing the music of Lorca’s Andalusian dialect in English has always been a challenge and Marina Carr, who has adapted the play for the Young Vic, addresses this by using Irish cadences and idiom to capture the deep cultural anguish of rural Spain.
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