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.

It works well and, by erasing the particularity of the setting, makes the play more universal and allegorical.

The story has the simplicity of a demonic fairy tale. A girl (Aoife Duffin) gets married but is drawn inexorably to a former suitor and runs away with him. The families respond predictably and repeat the merciless violence that has shaped their history — revenge is absolute and there is a bloodbath. No-one gains, the young all die and there's no redemption.

This is a godless world where “homo sapiens have had their turn” and only the Neanderthals survive.

Yael Farber’s production captures the sterile torment of the young, for whom lust is lost in tribalism and hatred. The magic and mystery of the culture is reflected through the impassioned contralto singing of Thalissa Teixeira as Moon and, visually, the sets and effects are often stunning, particularly when Gavin Drea as Leonardo, the forbidden lover, circles the stage on an imaginary horse with all the anarchic beauty of an Achilles on the battlefield.

Faaiz Mbelizi and Roger Jean Nsengiyumva as Woodcutters together form a sinister Greek chorus and the old women (Olwen Fouere as Mother and Annie Firbank as Housekeeper) chill the blood with their bitter memories and cries for vengeance.

But it is Brid Brennan as Weaver who brilliantly personifies evil and the horrors that humans can and do commit.      

Dark and dismal, Blood Wedding is primeval in its vision and Lorca’s truths are absolute and uncompromising. His women are demons and his men are born for revenge.

But this is the Spain of civil war and Farber brings it to us, unadulterated and miserable, but ennobled through a poetry whose chords resonate bone-deep.

Runs until November 2, box office: youngvic.org