2009 Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro

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Bulletin of the Comediantes, Volume 61, Number 2, 2009, pp. 159-173 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\%XOOHWLQRIWKH&RPHGLDQWHV DOI: 10.1353/boc.0.0026

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2009 Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro Vincent Martin University of Delaware “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.” —Matsuo Bashō THIS 32ND EDITION of the Classical Theater Festival of Almagro (2 July-26 July 2009) celebrated the 400th anniversary of Lope’s Arte nuevo de hacer comedias and the revolutionary impact that text and its author have had on the history of Spanish theater. It also opened a four-year period dedicated to Lope, which will extend through the 2012 Festival, marking the author’s 450th birthday. As a visual symbol of Lope’s lead role this year, Alicante’s Carros de Foc transformed their 30-foot-tall, crane-driven marionette, named Salvador, into the monstruo de la naturaleza himself, parading him through the Plaza Mayor on the late afternoons of 19 and 25 July, where he roamed and recited (auto)biographical nuggets to the astonished onlookers (Fig. 1).

Figure 1.  “Marioneta Gigante.” Carros de Foc. Photo: Manuel Ruiz Toribio. Photo Courtesy of the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro.

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Among the seventeen separate Lope texts presented this year, audiences saw four versions of Fuenteovejuna—with troupes from Cuba, Japan, and Spain mounting this piece—two versions of La gatomaquia, and one company even staged Lope’s Arte nuevo in the Corral de Comedias. The Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (CNTC) produced Lope’s ¿De cuando acá nos vino? and the anonymous La estrella de Sevilla, a play they had not done since Miguel Narros’s magnificent staging (of Joan Oleza’s version) which debuted at the Almagro Festival for the CNTC’s 1998-1999 season. And while Estrella may well have been penned by another poet, its inclusion in the Festival was a logical choice for the CNTC, since this masterpiece certainly bears the seal of excellence (“es de Lope”), if not the stamp of authenticity. Festival Director Emilio Hernández gave the classics a contemporary flavor, making them relevant to contemporary spectators through various means, including the use of the internet (opening a Lope profile on Facebook), programming an array of modern versions of the classics (e.g., Portuguese director João Garcia Miguel’s Burgher King Lear, or Miguel Narros’s flamenco rendition of Fedra), and a section—“Lope a tope”—aimed specifically at the younger crowd. Opening night included the dazzling performance art by the madrileño Suso 33, titled Lanzadera de palabras, an interactive live painting that turned Almagro’s Ayuntamiento into a support for laser graffiti that projected images (Lope’s face, comedy and tragedy masks, theater curtains, etc.) and a host of Lope-relevant words as called out by spectators through a megaphone (“Belisa,” “Perro,” “Arte,” “Venganza,” “Enamorada,” “Fuente,” “Boba,” “Amarilis,” “Caballero,” “Gatomaquia,” etc.); the artist signed off with a general well-wishing to all the companies and actors at this year’s Festival: “Mucha Mierda” (Fig. 2). Not surprisingly, many locals were scandalized by this radical Festival opening, and that was, amusingly, the talk of the townies during the entire month. In a similar vein, a free rap concert by Rapsodas en el Barrio—a group of multiethnic Gen Yers from Madrid’s Orcasitas neighborhood—started up on 5 July in the Plaza de Santo Domingo at 1:30 a.m., just as the throngs were exiting the theaters around town. While I

Figure 2.  Lanzadera de palabras. Suso 33. Photo: Manuel Ruiz Toribio. Photo Courtesy of the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro.

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have definitely seen and heard better rap performances, the incorporation of hip-hop versions of classic texts (including fragments of El caballero de Olmedo and Fuenteovejuna) was a novel touch to this year’s Festival. These examples of making the classics more accessible to today’s youth through different “languages” and vehicles lies at the heart of Hernández’s mission: “porque los clásicos son más que teatro, es un arte multidisciplinar que aúna hoy al igual que en el Siglo de Oro interpretación, música y danza.” And this democratizing mission is nothing less than the continuation of Lope’s original project to please the general audience—“como las paga el vulgo, es justo / hablarle en necio para darle gusto”—speaking to them on their own terms: “que el cómico lenguaje / sea puro, claro, fácil, y […] / que se tome del uso de la gente.” When the dust settled at the end of the month, over 80,000 spectators had descended upon this Manchegan village to see 67 international companies present a total of 162 performances in 18 different spaces. In addition to theater performances, spectators attended concerts, dance, storytelling, exhibitions, workshops for children and adults, including the workshop “La escritura escénica contemporánea a partir del Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias,” aimed at younger playwrights (born after 1974) with at least two published plays under their belt, directed by Guillermo Heras (1-5 July), and the voice workshop titled “Interpretación a través de la palabra,” directed by Gabriel Garbisu (3-5 July), which focused on passages from El castigo sin venganza (Casandra and Federico, ll. 1797-2030), La vida es sueño (Rosaura, ll. 1724-2017), and Fuenteovejuna (Laurencia, ll. 1723-1793). The Jornadas de Teatro Clásico, under the direction of Felipe Pedraza and Rafael González Cañal, were, as always, spread out over 3 jornadas (7-9 July), and there was a presentation of an attractive polyglot edition of Lope’s Arte nuevo, including text and notes by Felipe Pedraza, six prologues and translations by noted international Hispanists, and handsome images prepared by Mar Zubieta. The 9th annual Premio Corral de Comedias was presented to veteran stage director José Carlos Plaza, and a special homage was paid to the Universidad de Murcia’s Professor César Oliva. While the theme of the Festival was Lope, the program offered a virtual history of Western theater, which gave the Fénix’s contribution a particularly engaging context. The lively Fedra at the Antigua Universidad Renacentista (10-14 July) by Madrid’s Producciones Faraute linked the ancient and early modern worlds by synthesizing texts from Euripides, Seneca, and Racine to create a novel libretto that served as the foundation for a modern-day flamenco opera. Director Miguel Narros transposed the ancient myth of Phaedra into the contemporary gypsy world, where the aesthetic of tragedy is alive and well: “El flamenco está muy cerca de la tragedia. Como decía Lorca, somos un país trágico. Un teatro sin tragedia no existe.” Narros

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is, of course, a seasoned master of his craft, and this production exemplified Emilio Hernández’s objective to bring the classics to today’s younger audience. Among Narros’s many career achievements are his staging of Unamuno’s Fedra, a flamenco version of Euripides’s Medea, and a previous flamenco ballet version of this Fedra, performed in Mérida’s amphitheater in 1990 that was completely revamped for this new, high-energy, 90-minute performance. With spinetingling vocals by renowned cantaor Enrique Morente, Figure 3.  Fedra. Directed by Miguel Narros. Producciones Faraute. Spain 2009. L-R: Lola Greco (Fedra), Amador Rojas (Hipólito). impressive performances by Photo: Luis Malibrán. Photo Courtesy of Producciones Faraute. Lola Greco (Fedra) (Figs. 3 and 4), Carmelilla Montoya (Enone) (Fig. 4), Amador Rojas (Hipólito) (Fig. 3), and a chorus of young flamenco dancers sporting jeans and brightly colored shirts, some with popular logos, the classic texts did not seem so distant; the fine choreography by Javier Latorre cannot be too highly commended, and kudos go to producer Celestino Aranda for bringing this monumental vision to fruition. Narros’s stage was large and unadorned, allowing the grandeur of the tragedy to unfold within a minimalistic framework. A few key symbols spoke to the audience

Figure 4.  Fedra. Directed by Miguel Narros. Producciones Faraute. Spain 2009. L-R: Lola Greco (Fedra), Carmelilla Montoya (Enone). Photo: Luis Malibrán. Photo Courtesy of Producciones Faraute.

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visually, in harmony with the music and dance: Fedra’s dressing table with mirror and a pitcher of water, a web of red string, Hipólito’s motorcycle (Fig. 5). My students and I had the privilege of seeing this play performed on 2 July in Mérida’s Roman Theater—the play opened the 55th edition of the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Mérida on Figure 5.  Fedra. Directed by Miguel Narros. Producciones Faraute. Spain 1 July—where the full 2009. Photo: Luis Malibrán. Photo Courtesy of Producciones Faraute. effect of the ancient world of tragedy and its postmodern relevance came together to provide a nuanced forum for the catharsis of the tragic emotions. At the Claustro del Museo del Teatro (3-4 July), the Segovian company Nao D’Amores, in collaboration with Madrid’s Teatro de La Abadía, gave a stunning performance of the medieval Auto de los Reyes Magos, scripted and directed masterfully by Ana Zamora. Festival-goers will recall Zamora’s brilliant 2006 staging of Gil Vicente’s Don Duardos for the CNTC at the now defunct Claustro de los Dominicos; sadly, 2006 was the last year that space was used for the Festival, before the resurgence of the moralist controversy regarding the licitud del teatro provoked the Dominicans to remove it from the venue list. As in that previous Festival, where Zamora blended her set design into the precious Roman-arched Renaissance cloister, this year she mounted the Auto de los Reyes Magos in the cloistered patio of what in another era was the palace of the Maestre de Calatrava, the location of the opening scene of Fuenteovejuna. This intimate patio, with its mudéjar remnants, and on this occasion imbued with incense before and during the play with a large censer, seemed to blur historical time and mythical time (Fig. 6); and the three Reyes Magos playing out their story before the three horseshoe arches of the northern end of the patio could not have been more serendipitous. As in Zamora’s mounting of Don Duardos, the actors interacted closely with the audience, telling their well-known story through the filter of pure innocence. Zamora’s profound commitment to early Spanish drama has made a significant contribution to the revival and survival of these “primitive” pieces, and among the various factors that breathe new life into these plays are the focus on the use of music and instruments from the period,

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the recovery of customs and traditions, expert puppeteering, authentic dialect, and a keen understanding of the literary and dramatic traditions, which allow her to create a libretto that is both esoteric and exoteric. Her dramaturgy of the twelfth-century Auto de los Reyes Magos synthesizes texts from the original 147-line play with other contemporary selections from Gonzalo de Berceo (Loores de Nuestra Señora, “Ave, Maris Stella,” and Los signos del juicio final), Haly Abenragel (El libro conplido en los iudizios de las estrellas)—translated into Spanish in 1254 by Yehuda- ben Moshe for King Alfonso X—and various Latin fragments (e.g., “El canto de la Sibila”) and musical and dramatic sequences and Figure 6.  Auto de los Reyes Magos. Directed by liturgical tropes (e.g., “¿Quem quaeritis?”). Ana Zamora. Co-production: Teatro de la Abadía and Nao D’Amores. Nati Vera (Sibila). Spain, 2009. The result is an impressive libretto that Photo: Ros Ribas. Photo courtesy of Nao D’Amores. underscores the convivencia in Spain during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. While few (if any) spectators could actually follow all the Latin and old Spanish of the songs and dialogue, Zamora made it fully comprehensible through lively and innovative music, actions, and symbols (visual, audible, and olfactory). Listening to the Latin and Spanish as spoken in Spain at the time was a supreme delight, and can be credited to asesor de verso Vicente Fuentes, as well as to the company’s extraordinary rigor. As the granddaughter of the late Alonso Zamora Vicente, Ana Zamora’s philological talent may be somewhat innate; nevertheless, her diligence with these early texts is truly admirable, and it gives her work Figure 7.  Auto de los Reyes Magos. Directed by Ana Zamora. Co-production: an unusually multifaceted Teatro de la Abadía and Nao D’Amores. Spain, 2009. Photo: Ros Ribas. Photo dimension. courtesy of Nao D’Amores.

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Figure 8.  Auto de los Reyes Magos. Directed by Ana Zamora. Co-production: Teatro de la Abadía and Nao D’Amores. Nati Vera (Sibila). Spain, 2009. Photo: Ros Ribas. Photo courtesy of Nao D’Amores.

As always, music played a lead role in Zamora’s stagecraft; instruments used in this production, under the musical direction of Alicia Lázaro, all produced sounds worthy of Fray Luis’s “Oda a Francisco Salinas,” and they included the medieval fiddle (Sofía Alegre), hurdy gurdy and lute (Alicia Lázaro), recorders and crumhorn (Elvira Pancorbo and Elena García-Arroba), organ and cornamuse (Isabel Zamora, the director’s sister). Nati Vera was both sublime and uncanny in her role as the Sybil (Figs. 6, 7, 8), and Zamora made the Evangelists come to life through their traditional Christian iconography (Mark-lion, Luke-bull, John-eagle), this time in the form of cavallets, popular elements from the medieval processions in Catalunya (see cover photo). As Zamora describes the liturgico-dramatic experience of this dynamic and ludic spectacle: “Un juguete escénico que resulta casi tan inverosímil como lo es la propia historia de las religiones: sibilas, profetas, evangelistas, reyes magos, pastores, animales, lavanderas, rabinos... autómatas que conviven abigarrados, en el interior de un capitel románico.” The actors, musicians, and puppeteers followed their star, and the one-hour performance left that “indelible mark” that Antonin Artaud famously sought for his audience. A true highlight at this year’s festival was Rezuma Teatro’s fresh and vibrant staging of Rojas Zorrillas’s Sin honra no hay amistad in the Corral de Comedias (15-20 July). Navas cites Bashō’s proverb as the guiding principle behind his “zen” approach to the classics: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.” He thus sets

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the play in the early 1970s, for reasons that are well grounded in his admirable reading of the original text and its relevance to the hippie movement in Spain. Juana’s long speech to Inés in Act 1 highlights the “love ‘em and leave ‘em” attitude and courtship practices of men, and she decides that she is going to adopt that policy to avenge women, though with no intention of consummating those rituals. Juana clearly paints herself within the tradition of the mujer esquiva of the new comedy, and Navas intelligently incorporates this “feminist” point of departure into the era of free love and “women’s liberation.” He also accutely picks up on the (bi-)curious relationship Figure 9.  Sin honra no hay amistad. Directed between the two galanes who are by Juanma Navas. Rezuma Teatro. Spain, 2009. Graphic design: Indalecio Prieto. Program forced to decide between love and courtesy of Rezuma Teatro. friendship, thus giving the play its title. The underlying “questioning” that Navas brings to light can certainly be read into the text, and it provides a support for Antonio’s single status at the end of the play. Taking a technical cue directly from La Cubana’s 1994 sensation Cegada de amor, director Juanma Navas guided a highly talented group of actors through a multimedia extravaganza that poured new wine into old wineskins. As in Cegada, Navas used film projected onto screens to give him more options to play with time and space (both physical and psychological), and to tease out the subtle possibilities of the original text. Among the various uses Navas made of these screens (scene change, cityscape, sight gags, etc.), I found the thought bubbles or fantasy sequences particularly apropros and highly entertaining. As “that obscure object of desire,” Juana appears in the fantasies of Antonio and Melchor, as projected onto each character’s respective screen; Melchor’s fantasy is romantic and sensual, while Antonio’s is aggresively sexual. The use of the slit screen on a theater stage to allow interaction between film/video and live actors requires the most precise timing, and this company succeeded in meshing two planes of artistic “reality.” Since the hippie movement hit Spain somewhat later than in the USA, Navas is able to place Antonio and Melchor in the discotheque, sporting wild outfits, at the same time as he portrays Juana as a genuine flower child. The gracioso Sabañón is also a bona fide hippy, and he is the first character the

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audience sees; as he popped up throught the trap door in the Corral’s stage, boom box in hand, the audience was thrown into the trippy adventure Navas had created (Fig. 10). Music is a protagonist in this staging, and some of Rojas Zorrillas’s original lines were played out over the radio-cassette, as lyrics to songs by The Moody Blues (“Nights in White Satin”), or to provide another level of irony and wit, as when Antonio and Melchor relate their visions of Juana—projected onto each character’s screen—to the music of The Rolling Stones’s “Lady Jane” (the musical pun was certainly intended). Fragments from various other artists (The Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc.) supplied a colorful and germane backdrop to the successful transformation of this delightful seventeenth-century romantic comedy that remained true to the original text. Sardo Irisarri (Sabañón) was nothing short of brilliant, while the entire company worked seamlessly as a cohesive unit to showcase their formidable acting skills. The thundering ovation at the Corral on 18 July was well deserved, and Navas clearly succeeded in his zen quest. Also at the Corral (3-7 July), Madrid’s Producciones Micomicón, directed by Laila Ripoll and Mariano Llorente, staged a one-hour version of Lope’s Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. While the attempt to mount this text as drama is admirable, and this year’s Festival could have provided the backdrop for an all-out success, the result was somewhat disappointing, and was often reduced to mere jokes and gags. The company at times stood

Figure 10.  Sin honra no hay amistad. Directed by Juanma Navas. Rezuma Teatro. Spain, 2009. L-R: Luis Felpeto (Melchor), Sardo Irisarri (Sabañón), Antonio Chamizo (Antonio). Photo: Manuel Ruiz Toribio. Photo Courtesy of the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro.

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onstage as a group, taking turns reciting lines from Lope’s Arte nuevo, but with no dramatic purpose behind the recitation. For example, immediately after one actor recited Lope’s precept “Si hablare el rey, imite cuanto pueda / la gravedad real,” the Figure 11.  Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. Directed by Laila Ripoll audience heard and Mariano Llorente. Producciones Micomicón. Spain, 2009. Photo Courtesy of a recording of Producciones Micomicón. King Juan Carlos I, famously lashing out at Hugo Chávez at the Ibero-American Summit in 2007: “¿Por qué no te callas?” Admittedly a crowd-pleaser, and fully in the spirit of Lope—“como las paga el vulgo, es justo / hablarle en necio para darle gusto”—the joke did not really transcend the platform of stand-up comedy. A less witty and ironic example, and one that was far too unimaginative, was the company’s “performance” of Lope’s “Quede muy pocas veces el teatro / sin persona que hable.” I held my breath hoping that all the actors on stage would not simply stand there in silence after reciting those lines, but they did, as they looked at their watches. During that horror vacui, the voice of one true mosquetero was heard commenting aloud in the intimate Corral patio: “¡Demasiado fácil!” Nevertheless, the production was entertaining, and did, in fact, demonstrate a strong

Figure 12.  Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. Directed by Laila Ripoll and Mariano Llorente. Producciones Micomicón. Spain, 2009. Photo Courtesy of Producciones Micomicón.

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understanding of Lope’s work, as well as a highly skilled group of actors, who also took on roles of characters from La dama boba, El mejor alcalde, el rey, and Lo fingido verdadero. The set design had at its center a sort of multifunctional retablo, which proved to be an excellent choice, given the fact that a Lope marionette, always handled with respect and care, was the protagonist of the entire show. Lope’s various pursuits (literature, women, et al.) were visualized through this prop-character, and the metaphoric implications of Lope as both puppet and puppeteer at the Almagro Festival dedicated to him and his Arte nuevo gave much food for thought. This retablo also served as the house for the hilarious Entremés de los sordos, mounted within this production as a wink to the new comedy’s metatheatricality, and for a host of other sketch comedy routines, such as Góngora popping his head out of one of the holes, revolving as if on a rotisserie, and tediously reciting his Soledades. Naturally, he was shot and killed at point-blank range. Had the directors focused a bit more on actually turning Lope’s Arte nuevo and its diverse ramifications into theater, and a bit less on stand-up gags, this highly entertaining show could have been a veritable “monster” at this year’s Festival. At the Hospital de San Juan (16-26 July), the CNTC, under the direction of Eduardo Vasco, staged a compelling version of La estrella de Sevilla. The authorship polemic surrounding this play has only had a negative effect on the staging of this masterpiece, according to Vasco, who wisely gives priority to the text, and not to the “disquisiciones filológicas” which surround it. For the mounting of this dark tragedy of love and power in thirteenth-century Seville, Vasco walled off the entire stage area in a black

Figure 13.  La estrella de Sevilla. Directed by Eduardo Vasco. Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico. Spain, 2009. Photo: Chicho. Photo Courtesy of the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico.

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box set to provide a thoroughly suffocating atmosphere. Each character who entered the stage space remained there until the end of the play (or until they died). This added to the eeriness, since the action developed before myriad witnesses, representing the city of Seville, lurking in the shadows, watching and gossiping. These ubiquitous characters always delineated a clear demarcation of “on stage” and “off stage,” but character preparation for a scene was done in plain view of the audience and at times proved somewhat distracting. Carolina González created the minimalist set, consisting of maple-colored walls, floor, and blocks/columns that the actors moved around to signify scene change: the walls of a prison, Estrella’s chamber, the palace rooms of the Alcázar, etc. Lighting, expertly designed by Miguel Ángel Camacho, gave a textured dimension to the various spatial planes represented on stage, and the evolving plotline was illuminated (or darkened) in a most aesthetic way; lighting was also used to redirect audience attention when characters on stage were preparing for the next scene. Live baroque violin accompaniment by Isaac M. Pulet also underscored key moments in the action through the creation of symbolic and fateful timbres; Pulet’s violin marked both the beginning and the end of the entire tragedy. The neutral wardrobe design by Lorenzo Caprile, intended to modernize the setting, was far less convincing; characters were dressed in non-descript dark suits, with the exception of Clarindo’s red jacket lining—which, when reversed became a symbolic red jacket—and Estrella’s scene in which she dons her bridal gown (Fig. 13). Daniel Albaladejo (Rey Don Sancho) and Jaime Soler (Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas) gave stellar performances; Muriel Sánchez (Estrella) and Paco Vila (Clarindo) left something to be desired. In all, Vasco offered a fresh take on this classic text, and, more to the point, he snatched it from the academic quibblings to give it its proper place, namely, the stage. At the Teatro Municipal (20-22 July), acclaimed director Fernando Urdiales led Valladolid’s Teatro Corsario through a haunting rendition of Lope’s El caballero de Olmedo, brimming with folklore and tradition. Urdiales’s authentic version, which debuted at this year’s Festival de Teatro Clásico de Olmedo (18 July) where it won the “Premio del Público,” gave center stage to bullfighting as both symbol and allegory. This ingenious leitmotif was carried out in multiple ways and through multiple characters and stagecraft techniques that were chock-full of color and energy, and which provided an easy passage for today’s audience into the tragic twists of Lope’s play. The stage was transformed into a bullring that penned in the underlying themes of love, honor, death, and destiny. At the end of the play, the brooms that had been used by characters during the show were turned upside-down to represent the wooded road to Olmedo where Don Alonso meets his tragic fate; lighting during this scene, the work of Javier Martín, was excellent

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Figure 14.  El caballero de Olmedo. Directed by Fernando Urdiales. Teatro Corsario. Spain, 2009. Photo: Luis Laforga. Photo Courtesy of Teatro Corsario.

(Fig. 15). The multifunctional stage props permitted quick scene changes: the stacking of benches, for example, to simulate the rejas on which Inés hangs her symbolic listón verde. Urdiales’s fine staging of Caballero, remaining true to the original text, illuminates Lope’s role in the history of tragedy—from Sophocles to Lorca—and the Fénix’s recycling of archetypes; this Fabia, for example, was clearly portrayed as a tough old bird from “Celestina’s brood.” Onstage guitar accompaniment by Juan Carlos Martín further enhanced the folkloric element, and at the same time created an otherworldly space for a vates. The live guitar camouflaged the scene changes, and it linked Fabia to the gypsy tradition. Fabia also played an odd instrument throughout the show (on and off stage), a kind of wooden ratchet noisemaker resembling the Jewish gragger, thus giving the themes of superstition and witchcraft greater depth. The entire show was cleverly wedged between the operatic singing of the fateful song (“Que de noche le mataron …”) by the mellifluous Verónica Ronda (Inés). The acting was first-rate, and the combination of Rosa Manzano (Fabia) and

Figure 15.  El caballero de Olmedo. Directed by Fernando Urdiales. Teatro Corsario. Spain, 2009. Photo: Luis Laforga. Photo Courtesy of Teatro Corsario.

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Figure 16.  El caballero de Olmedo. Directed by Fernando Urdiales. Teatro Corsario. Spain, 2009. L-R: Rosa Manzano (Fabia), Luis Miguel García (Tello). Photo: Luis Laforga. Photo Courtesy of Teatro Corsario.

Luis Miguel García (Tello) was magnificent (Fig. 16). Unfortunately, during the 22 July performance, Verónica Ronda (Inés) had a coughing attack that lasted the entire show, but which thankfully did not affect her singing. In addition to directing this play, Urdiales designed the wardrobe and stage props, and he was also a set designer, thus showcasing his many talents. Festival Director Emilio Hernández pointed out that this 100-minute Caballero would leave Festival-goers with a good taste of Lope in their mouths. And right he was. Madrid’s Rakatá Teatro returned again this year under the direction of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Laurence Boswell. Festival-goers will recall this company’s performance last year at the Corral of Lope’s El perro del hortelano, also directed by Boswell. This year, Boswell took on Fuenteovejuna, and mounted it at the Antigua Universidad Renacentista (4-6 July). With a cast of 14 women and 23 men, who at times took the stage together, the magnitude of this show recalled a well-orchestrated Broadway production. The magnificent set design, the work of Jeremy Herbert, included a large, conceptual piece that opened and closed to serve a host of functions and spaces, including the violent and phallic house of the Comendador, which perfectly complemented the character’s actions on stage; superb lighting, by Chahine Yabrodan, and special effects further enhanced the use of this Figure 17.  Fuenteovejuna. Directed by Laurence Boswell. Rakatá Teatro. clever construction Spain, 2009. Alberto Jiménez (Fernán Gómez). Photo: Alejandra Duarte. (Fig. 17). Photo Courtesy of Rakatá Teatro.

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Figure 18.  Fuenteovejuna. Directed by Laurence Boswell. Rakatá Teatro. Spain, 2009. L-R: Alejandra Sáenz (Jacinta), Lidia Otón (Laurencia). Photo: Alejandra Duarte. Photo Courtesy of Rakatá Teatro.

A well was placed at the foot of the stage to give the audience an up-close view of the serenity of village life (Fig. 18). The wedding scene was choreographed spectacularly by Juana González, and the excellent wardrobe was the design of Catriona Macphee; Lope would have doubtless approved of the true feeling of beatus ille penetrating these scenes. Actresses Lidia Otón and Alejandra Sáenz—who gave memorable performances as Marcela and Anarda in last year’s El perro del hortelano—were truly remarkable this year in their roles as Laurencia and Jacinta (Fig. 18); Rodrigo Arribas, on the other hand, who was fantastic last year as Conde Federico, was less convincing this year as Rey Don Fernando. Lamentable was Boswell’s decision to omit the last scene of the play, in which Frondoso reveals that Laurencia’s honor has remained intact, and thereby providing Lope’s “happy ending”: “y a no saberse guardar / ella, que en virtud florece, / ya manifiesto parece / lo que pudiera pasar (ll. 2415-18). Nevertheless, the 110-minute show was well worth the price of admission, and we can only hope that Rakatá becomes a permanent fixture at the Festival, if it hasn’t done so already. Each year the Almagro Festival offers fresh, new looks at the plays we think we know so well. This year, in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Lope’s Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo, audiences—both young and old—were presented with a multitude of forms of entertainment that led to new and meaningful experiences with the classics en este tiempo. Festival Director Emilio Hernández certainly achieved his goal of making the classic texts readily available to the younger audiences, and the 2009 Almagro Festival truly earned its promotional logo: “Es de Lope.” Figure 19.  Fuenteovejuna. Directed by Laurence Boswell. Rakatá Teatro. Spain, 2009. Lidia Otón (Laurencia). Photo: Alejandra Duarte. Photo Courtesy of Rakatá Teatro.

Bulletin of the Comediantes •

2009 Vol. 61 No. 2

173