Blood Wedding review: Atmospheric, earthy and boldly close to the preposterous

1/13
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis26 September 2019

Sturm und Drang is South African director Yaël Farber’s signature mood, and her rendering of Lorca’s tragedy is intense but also surprisingly funny.

The tale of a doomed marriage has been transposed from rural 1930s Spain to hardscrabble Ireland by writer Marina Carr, the self-conscious mythologising and poetic language of its characters ramped up outrageously. It’s atmospheric, earthy and dances boldly close to the preposterous.

This is a world where the moon is a woman in a white suit singing pungent laments, where weavers and woodcutters are an ominous supernatural presence. It’s a place of hard religion and blood feuds, of earth, sweat and knives. Although there’s no attempt at contemporary relevance, the futility of tribalism and bitterness is powerfully communicated.

The main characters are mostly nameless. When David Walmsley’s rugged groom courts Aoife Duffin’s sullen bride, there’s ardour on his part but also pragmatism: her father boasts she will bear sons, “hefty workhorses to pound this land to genuflection”.

But she also carries baggage, in the shape of a past passion for Leonardo Felix (Gavin Drea), whose family has fought a long war with the groom’s family, the Gracias, involving murder and rape. Suffice to say, the wedding night does not go well for anyone.

The acting is strong and physical, with Leonardo’s nocturnal gallops beautifully evoked, and a couple of shirtless interludes to rival Poldark. Olwen Fouéré steals every scene she’s in as the Groom’s mother, steel-haired and winnowed down to something cold and hard by loss and grief. Indeed, there are three pleasingly hefty roles for older actresses here.

Farber and designer Susan Hilferty stage it with simplicity, the audience on three sides and a vast, tilted wall on the fourth. Lorca’s play is imbued with inevitability, and Farber keeps the pressure turned up to 11, which can prove wearing once the amusement at how gloriously OTT it all is wears thin. But for all its excess, I kind of loved it.

Until Nov 2 (020 7922 2922, youngvic.org)

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