The title is the only straightforward thing about ''The Death of Garcia Lorca.'' The play by the Venezuelan writer Jose Antonio Rial is a paella of posturings and polemics, thickened with scenes that manage to be obscure and obvious at the same time.
Federico Garcia Lorca, a poet and playwright who was murdered by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War, is presented here as a garrulous flower child who learns too late that the supporters of Franco are bad guys. He says, ''What does poetry matter on a planet of murderers?'' Bernard White, who may remind you a little of Gene Wilder trying to be boyish, suffers a lot, but so would you if you had to utter lines like, ''Our poems are wet paper if they cannot withstand all the rage of history.'' As somebody says after a while, ''This guy's losing it.'' To add to his ordeal, Mr. White is obliged to lie on a bed onstage during the entire 15-minute intermission.
Julio Marzan's translation specializes in fancy talk. ''I hear him breathing, quietly swallowing his hate in his saliva,'' says a housewife. Federico's aunt inquires, ''Are you sinking us into the shadow of the abyss?'' A maid says: ''I curse the milk you drunk from your mother. It should have turned to poison in your guts.'' The maid is talking to one of Franco's followers. You can tell these fellows by their uniforms and their tendency to holler threats like ''I say death to all the intellectuals!'' and ''Are you going to tell!'' They all have loud voices.
In accord with the customs of the Public Theater, where the play opened last night as part of the First New York International Festival of the Arts, the lines are delivered in diverse accents. Several of the performers in the large cast are reported to be favorites back home in Venezuela, Paraguay and Cuba. They are not given much of an opportunity here to show us why. Also, their heavily accented English, though understandable if you strain a little, has its odd side. You may find yourself wondering, for example, how it is that neither Federico nor his mother has the slightest accent, while English is at best a second or third language for his sister. Other characters, such as a woman who plays the piano and sings behind a screen that sometimes separates past from present, real from imagined, seem to have strayed down from Lincoln Center.
Among the less hysterical performances, Gonzalo Madurga, as a plausibly self-serving hanger-on of the Falange, delivers a relatively coherent though anticlimactic account of how Lorca was taken into captivity, and Mario Arrambide draws sympathy in the less coherent role of a condemned school teacher. The director, Carlos Gimenez, who also did the melodramatic lighting, goes in for stagy effects; when the characters aren't spouting off, they assume poses. Some of the effects work, such as the first-scene tableau of eight Spanish artists, got up in Rafael Reyeros's sporty fashions of the 1930's, posing for a final photograph before war and ideology separate them forever. Mr. Reyeros also designed the elegant set. It deserves better use.
THE DEATH OF GARCIA LORCA, by Jose Antonio Rial; translated by Julio Marzan; directed by Carlos Gimenez; scenery and costume design by Rafael Reyeros; lighting design by Mr. Gimenez; associate producer, Jason Steven Cohen. Presented by Joseph Papp. At the Public/Anspacher Theater, 425 Lafayette Street. WITH: Mario Arrambide, Sara Erde, Kevin Gray, Gonzalo Madurga, Joseph Palmas, Jorge Luis Ramos, Emilio Del Pozo, Cesar Evora, Margarita Irun, Roberto Medina, Tim Perez, Judith Roberts, Bernard White, Herbert Duarte, Patricia Falkenhain, Maria Cristina Lozada, Rene Moreno, Lionel Pina and Al Rodriguez.
Transcripción y Fuente: Gabriel Flores
 |
| Left to rigth: María Cristina Lozada, Carlos Giménez, Margarita Irún, César Evora |
"Que se diga siempre la verdad. Si triunfamos que se diga. Si pusimos la cagada y nos pitaron, que se diga", Carlos Giménez, entrevista de Hugo Colmenares.
Esta crítica es malísima y la publicamos para que la gente conozca las adversidades contra las cuales tuvo que luchar Carlos toda su vida: la incomprensión fue una de ellas (la envidia y el odio, otras). Pero él nunca desistió de su creación, de arriesgarse e innovar, y cuando tuvo éxitos resonantes y con críticas maravillosas, que fueron muchísimos, Carlos no se aferró a esa fórmula y en su siguiente montaje proponía una creación completamente diferente, audaz, novedosa.