REVIEW: Enthusiastic young cast cope with complex play
IT TAKES courage to attempt to produce and stage a play by Federico Garcia Lorca, even if you are a professional company featuring experienced adult actors.
So when Firefly Arts presented Blood Wedding by the Spanish author you may have expected them to utilise a transfusion of mature actors to play the parts of the anguished mother and mother-in-law.
To their credit, Firefly resisted and featured a young and enthusiastic cast who managed to handle screeds of dialogue and be word perfect in a storyline which included infidelity and latterly murder.
The play began with a solitary figure (Josh Taylor) playing a guitar on a darkened stage with a table and chairs set out off-centre.
The emotive music was used with excellent effect to link the scenes along with skilful scene changes using atmospheric lighting and minimal props.
If at times some of the dialogue galloped along and therefore became incomprehensible, blame it on Lorca's dark plot and not the cast who entered into the spirit of a Spain where vendettas were commonplace, crimes of passion persisted and the matriarchal figure dominated family life.
As the mother, Miriam Larrainzar managed to look the part and conveyed emotion beyond her years. Whilst at times she rushed her lines, the bridegroom Gareth Mutch had an endearing sincerity.
Anna Smeaton together with Brianne Haddow as the mother-in-law, handled a difficult scene reciting avant garde poetry within the context of a lullaby.
As the bride, strangely dressed in black, well it was a dark play, Breigen Brown managed to portray anguish pretty well, as indeed did two-timing Leonardo (Danny Cunningham), although the undertones of unrequited love and passion were not quite as evident as the author may have intended, but well attempted by producer Laura Stephen.
When at one point the stage was bathed in mist, which spilled across into the audience, provoking muffled coughs and splutters, it is to their credit the cast carried on regardless, a sign of true professionalism.
And if at times the plot became slightly obscure and soporific, director Eleanor Morrison managed to place her actors in vantage points aided by Graham Wilson's adventurous lighting design and Kirsty Sutherland's technical management.
We even had a speaking moon (Arron Philip) and Death, in the guise of a beggar woman (Charlotte Moran). Yet despite the complexities, the small child behind us seemed totally immersed in the play whilst a lady in front remarked it was good in parts.
Excellent support was provided by Emily McCleary, Charlotte Moran, Mhairi Strachan, Arron Philip, Carrie Leighann Boardman, Amy Wilson, Paul King, Mairhi MacLeod and Mathew Jones.
Blood Wedding did receive an enthusiastic reception and brought talented and dedicated young actors, some who played more than one role, into the spotlight of the Brian Duguid auditorium at the Howden Park Centre where the company is actually based.
As they say in showbiz, follow that! Hopefully next time with something from the popular genre. Well done, nevertheless, Firefly. From such embers flames can grow.
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Monday 21 May 2012
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