Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding, written in the 1930s, ends with a reflection on the catastrophic damage a ‘little knife’ can do when placed in the wrong hands. As such, it is easy to see why director Poppy Burton- Morgan has shifted her production into the 21st century, in an attempt to draw parallels with a London supposedly rife with knife-crime. Unfortunately, Burton-Morgan’s eagerness to re-contextualise this piece has torn holes through Lorca’s tragedy. The ambivalent staging does little to clarify the context of this adaptation, the dialogue languishes between stylistic and casual, while repeated attempts to engage the audience only push them further from the heart of this play. This is a Lorca-lite production, which is good fun in parts, but has neither the resonance, nor crystal clear poetry or downright devastation contained in the original.

Burton-Morgan has some strong ideas, but she hasn’t brought the right ones into focus here. This is best exemplified by the inclusive but inconclusive set: bunting is draped across the ceiling, snacks and punch laid out on tables and the audience seated as guests to this spectacle. While the layout does a nice job of blurring the divide between stage and spectator, it isn’t specific enough and makes it tricky to identify the play’s location. I’m all for drawing the audience in, but this design feels like a non-descript Town Hall bazaar and does little to help establish modern parallels.

Burton-Morgan’s desire to involve the audience has also resulted in some dubious, extended musical interludes. Yes, Lorca’s tragedy contains a lot of songs, but they aren’t meant to be showbiz numbers. They are there to layer on the tension, but composer Jessica Dannheiser’s predominantly cheery numbers provide light-relief and pull us out of the play. It feels more like a West End musical than an eerie, jet-black tragedy, and the abundance of singalongs is poor preparation for the play’s inestimably gloomy second half. By the time we get to the pre-interval revelation – that the bride has fled her wedding with lover Leonardo – the audience is so buoyed up by the singing, snacks and general merriment that they seem more concerned with the finding the bar than helping the groom track down his missing bride.

The production’s second half is better, more dramatic and more peculiar, but it is an awkward companion to such a light-hearted opening. There is too much catching up to do and the actors, with their natural and sometimes garbled delivery, struggle to keep up with Lorca’s soaring poetry and dramatic flourishes. Naomi Withers, playing the groom’s prophetic mother, is the only actress who takes her time with the text - pronouncing poetry rather than expelling prose – and her performance is much heavier and spookier as a result.

Burton-Morgan’s embellishments, though theoretically workable, have not quite worked here, and rather than lending this play a fresh immediacy, force one to question why it was such a great success in the first place. 

Till 15 August 2009