A misguided pop-rock staging of "Blood Wedding," dark tale of yearning

Theater review |

Chances are when a play opens on a sparse stage with an old woman dressed in mourning-black and a knife nearby that nothing good is about to happen.

Certainly nothing does in Federico García Lorca's "Blood Wedding," a work of bitter poetry written by the playwright in 1933, three years before his murder at the onset of the Spanish Civil War.

Open Circle Theater's bold, somewhat overhauled and sporadically inspired production of García Lorca's best-known work is being mounted at the company's new, roomy and comfortable Belltown digs.

"Blood Wedding" is less a narrative drama than a dramatic composition, favoring tone and form over a sketchy story of a doomed betrothal. The piece is full of contradictions, requiring a certain grace to convey García Lorca's journey to savage violence.

García Lorca also threatens to derail the proceedings in the second act, when his elemental tale of murder, grief and raging passions suddenly ratchets up an early hint of surreal magic by turning the moon itself into a stunning character.

Director Ron Sandahl appropriately keeps a lid on the story's seething, dark and mystical forces, especially the startling introduction of that lambent moon (Gina Russell), who aches to illuminate everything blocked from her light.

"Blood Wedding" is all about such foiled yearnings, including the destruction of generational hopes through murder and unfaithfulness.

Sandahl's experiments in revisionism are a mixed bag. Changing the play's setting from rural Spain to the American Southwest is innocuous but unrevealing, and a pop-rock score by John McKenna probably worked better in theory than in reality.

Much of the cast doesn't seem quite up to the material, and several performances are downright awkward. Fortunately, this is a play that, in many ways, conjures its deep mysteries no matter what.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com