Blood Wedding
Visually arresting, emotionally intense
The clashing worlds within Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding are a vivid study in contrasts. On one side, an earth that is abundant and fecund, vibrant with blossoming flowers, fertile vineyards and banquet tables groaning under the weight of platters laden with fruit. On the other, "the dry lands", an arid, parched landscape where nothing grows and no one lives.
Directed by Daniel Ostling (who also designed the set), Blood Wedding is visually arresting and emotionally intense. But the overarching themes that Lorca delves into aren't always clear, despite a fine cast and a staging rich with retina-searing images accompanied by haunting original music.
Ostling has moved Lorca's tragedy from Spain to the depths of the Great Depression and the hollows of an Appalachian-like rural community. The plot centers on star-crossed lovers Leonardo (Kareem Bandealy) and The Bride (Helen Sadler). Both turn in memorable performances so emotionally raw and captivating, you're apt to overlook the problems that crop up in the disjointed, confusing final act.
Blood Wedding starts strong, as a lone voice rises across the stage, the song gradually powering up as more and more voices join in. Rick Sims' original music evokes the haunting, ancient folk songs highlighted in films such as "Songcatcher" and "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou." It provides a shimmering, sonic cord woven through the two-hour, two-intermission production, and the cast instills it with majesty, exuberance, and heartbreak as the story winds on.
Blood Wedding centers on an ostensibly celebratory occasion: the wedding day of The Groom (Chance Bone) and his beloved Bride (Sadler). But the Groom's Mother (Christine Mary Dunford) is grim. Her son is marrying into the family that murdered her husband and another son. The Groom's Mother will not forget or forgive. She shows up at the wedding in black, from the severe wide brimmed hat to tightly buttoned shoes. Even without Mara Blumenfeld's gorgeous period costuming, the Mother's unhappiness would be apparent. Dunford creates a woman who's taut, joyless smiles indicate a bottomless well of anger.
On the Bride's side, happiness is also in short supply. The Bride's maid (Eva Barr) is loving and joyous, but the Bride is surly, petulant and deeply reticent about getting married. She's repulsed by her wedding crown and by the Groom's touch. In Sadler's nuanced performance, you can see the wild-eyed desperation just about to explode to the surface of the Bride's demeanor. The cause of her (barely) pent-up rage is Leonardo (Bandealy), the married man she truly loves and who loves her. When the two are on stage together, you can all but see waves of heat blasting from them.
The first act follows the preparations for the wedding, the second the wedding itself. With the third act, Ostling abruptly shifts the tone completely, taking the audience deep into a ghostly fantasia of magical realism. The final half hour plays like a nightmare, all misty cornered shadows and ill-met moonlight. The music comes crashing down - literally, via an upright piano that looms above and then seems to hurtle through space. It's after that jaw-dropping piano plummet that Blood Wedding loses its scalding steam. The dialogue becomes a thick maze of flowery purple prose and melodramatic incantations, the characters lose their flesh-and-blood urgency and turn into shadows. There's a climactic duel that takes an entirely inexplicable turn in the final seconds, followed by a show-ending blackout that's abrupt and unsatisfying.
Inexplicably, the production comes with two intermissions. Straight through, it's roughly a 90-minute show. By breaking it into half-hour fragments, Ostling loses the narrative's crucial momentum.
Still, the cast here is unbeatable. Bandealy smolders as if the fire of a thousand suns were burning in his bones. Sadler makes thwarted passion palpable. And Dunford shows us a woman made hard and uncompromising by sadness.
Ostling's set is all raw hewn planks evocative of rough mountain homes. An upstage pair of towering wooden gates provide an amazing backdrop for Bandealy's Act II entrance, and drive home the massive obstacles standing in the way of the characters' happiness. TJ Gerckens' lighting is luminous as spring sunshine for the first two thirds of the play, before turning the stage into a land of chilly shadows and ominous alcoves.
Lorca's allegorical subtext may get fuzzy in Lookingglass' production, but there's no denying the beauty of the production or the chemistry that sparks between its doomed lovers.
Blood Wedding continues through Date at Lookingglass Theatre, 821 N. Michigan (map), with performances Wednesdays-Fridays at 7:30pm, Saturdays-Sundays at 2:30pm & 7:30pm. Tickets are $40-$75, and are available by phone (312-337-0665) or online through PrintTixUSA.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com ). More information at LookingglassTheatre.org. (Running time: 2 hours, includes two intermissions)
Photos by Liz Lauren
(The Bridegroom's Mother), Christine Mary Dunford (neighbor, maid, ensemble), Kareem Bandealy (Leonardo), Troy West (Father of the Bride), Atra Asdou (Leonardo's Wife), Chance Bone (The Bride Groom), Helen Sadler (Bride), Wendy Mateo (Mother-in-Law, second girl), Melisa Pereyra (The Moon, The Girl), Kevin Viol (Woodcutter, Young Man Two), Bubbba Weiler (Woodcutter, Young Man One), Sophia Michelle Bastounes (Little Girl)
behind the scenes
Daniel Ostling (director, set design), Mara Blumenfeld (costume design), TJ Gerckens (lighting design), Joshua Horvath (sound design), (original music), Tracy Walsh (choreography), Sarah Burnham (props), Tess Golden (stage manager), Liz Lauren (photos)
Tags: 16-0324, Atra Asdou, Bubbba Weiler, Carmen Zapata, Catey Sullivan, Catherine Zapata, Chance Bone, Chicago Theater, Christine Mary Dunford, Daniel Ostling, Eva Barr, Federico García Lorca, Helen Sadler, Joshua Horvath, Kareem Bandealy, Kevin Viol, Liz Lauren, Lookingglass Theatre, Mara Blumenfeld, Melisa Pereyra, Michael DeWell, Michael Dewer, post, Rick Sims, Sarah Burnham, Sophia Michelle Bastounes, Tess Golden, TJ Gerckens, Tracy Walsh, Troy West, Wendy Mateo
