Thursday, February 12, 2009

Blood Wedding Review

*My costumes got my first good Seattle Review!!!*

OCT has dusted off a seldom-produced play by one of my favorite poets, Federico Garcia Lorca (who I didn’t even know was a playwright), about a seemingly grand Spanish wedding gone to the coyotes when the bride has second thoughts. Though relocated from Spain to the more familiar American Southwest, this play is miles from ordinary. In mystic Lorcan fashion, players of the sky argue with Death (Alice Bridgforth) over the fate of the star-crossed lovers. Exquisite costumes and unexpectedly brassy musical interludes (kudos to Gina Russell for her Broadway-worthy vibrato as the bespangled Moon) overlay the serpentine plot of a biddable mama’s boy (Shayne McNeal) who has just purchased the vineyard, and thus the bride (Annie Jantzen), of his dreams. Catherine Kettrick’s poignant role as his widowed mother invokes the feminist social commentary that helped get Lorca assassinated in Franco’s Spain. Director Ron Sandahl took a palpable risk in leaving the Wife’s role (also Russell) entirely in Spanish, but explanatory English responses plugged the info gap, and the lyrical exchanges of English con Espanol wove the otherworldly beauty of Lorca’s prose mejor que a literal translation would have. Este obra de teatro es tan bella y tan triste. JENNA NAND 7:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 4 p.m. Sun. Ends Feb. 28. SEATTLE WEEKLY

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