September 17–24, 1998

critical mass|fringe reviews

Lorca, Lorca, Lorca

This year is the centenary of the birth of legendary Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, and the Fringe Festival joined the celebration by offering two works: Poeta en Nueva York, a multi-media performance presented by the Seville-based Producciones Imperdibles for three nights last week at the Painted Bride, and The Lorca Cycle, a collection of three hour-long plays created by the local Pig Iron Theatre Company and running through the weekend at St. Stephen's Theater.

The Lorca Cycle comes to the Fringe much anticipated; the first section, Poet In New York, has been performed several times over the past two years to laudatory reviews here and in New York. And the piece reflects the time and effort spent on it. The sole performer (and co-creator) Dito van Reigersberg—a Lorca near-look-alike—invents a compelling portrayal of the writer and his year in New York (from which he produced the famous cycle of poetry), combining movement, period music, poetic language and conversations—real and imagined—with historical figures. (The thrusting, bombastic exhortation hurled by Salvador Dali at an embarrassed Lorca is the best part of the entire evening.)

This first piece offers many riches and so its underlying lack of context (you had best come knowing about Lorca's significance as artist and all-around genius) could be overlooked—as long as it's being produced alone. But add the second and third sections—Trip to the Moon, which follows Lorca's theater troupe La Barraca, and The Impossible Play, which recreates the days before his murder by the fascists—along with their sets and performers, and the skimpy structure of this "biographical fantasia" begins to fall apart. Overfreighted with symbolic gestures, confused by a tone that veers from vaudeville to the surreal, and both under- and overplayed by an uneven cast, the piece loses track of and, worse, we lose sympathy for, the strong character van Reigersberg worked so hard to create. The full collapse comes when Lorca is finally shot, and the audience is too exhausted to care.

The Producciones Imperdibles' Poeta avoids paying direct homage to the poet (and so succeeds in doing so) by making the powerful imagery in the New York poems the focus of the performance. The piece relies on music, the physicality and exuberance of the four accomplished performers, the direct and indirect use of the poetry (all untranslated), and an array of mechanical, filmic and scenic effects to evoke Lorca's spirit and make his vision larger than life.

In a scene representing the sleeplessness of Wall Street dreams, for example, the performers are attached to motorized guy wires on the ground against which they must alternately struggle and surrender. In another—a tribute to Lorca's (and our own) childlike fascination with the cosmos—a performer watches a wall-size film of the moon from a swing, her back to us, a tricycle she rode earlier hanging from one side as ballast.

Yet it is the last scene, a Spanish-rhythm rap song denouncing the unnaturalness of modern life, that gives the entire performance its purpose: maintaining and reasserting Lorca's relevance and universality. Poeta En Nueva York manages to set Lorca in the context of his time, but also cast him into the present and the future. And at 100, that would have to be the best birthday gift of all.

The Lorca Cycle, Parts 1, 2 and 3 at 6, 8 & 10 p.m., respectively, Sept. 17-18; entire cycle 7 p.m., Sept. 19, and at 2 p.m. on Sept. 20, St. Stephen's Theater, 923 Ludlow St., 413-2070.

-Violet Phillips