THEATRE

LORCA: A THEATRE BENEATH THE SAND 

TheSpace @ the Surgeon’s Hall V53

August 2 -24 (not 4,11,18)

16.25

🌟🌟🌟🌟 Four stars

This is a play that is a take on Lorca’s The Public. It is a world premiere at this Fringe by the acclaimed Spanish company Enebro Teatro. The play evokes the stay of the great and gay Spanish poet in New York City at the end of the 1920s.

Two young actors are rehearsing; they are preparing a performance of The Public to be played as a final course exercise at a drama school. Poetry and acrobatics are the essential elements in a surrealistic game the two play. Early on, they challenge the depth of each other’s love via transformations.

The two extremely talented performers here are Daniel Miguelanez, the poet, who performs most of the text, including long sections in Spanish.(For those of us not fluent in Spanish, a written translation of these sections would have been very helpful.) The acrobat and dancer is David Pereira (who has worked with Cirque du Soleil and Wintergarten), and whose skills as both dancer and acrobat are extreme, sublime and beautiful.

The set consists solely of a supermarket trolley, plus changes of costume, and they make great and imaginative use of what they have. You will never have seen a trolley danced on, around and in like this, and used with great acrobatic agility.

This is a show the grace, beauty and meaning of which will stay with you through the festival. It challenges you to think afresh about what you are doing with your moments.

Tony Challis