Blood Wedding
An Andalusian bride is forced to choose between duty and desire, her head and her heart.
The first of Federico Garcia Lorca’s folk trilogy of Spanish plays, Blood Wedding, begins with a woman dressed in black staring out from a bare stage. Beside her, a guitarist plays a fiery Flamenco-style rhythm. There is a sense of foreboding that one wouldn’t usually associate with a celebratory occasion – but this is not a festive wedding, it is a blood wedding.
The audience is swiftly transported from contemporary Sydney to rural Spain in the 1930s where an Andalusian bride is forced to choose between duty and desire; her head and her heart. The grooms' domineering mother – still grieving the loss of her husband and her other son – rightly suspects that the bride’s shadowy past will interfere with her pledge to submissively love, honour and obey her bridegroom. She sees that her secret all-consuming passion for another (or "el duende," as Lorca himself called it) may precipitate social catastrophe and eradicate everyone else's chance for romantic fulfillment.
The conventional world of the village collapses when the bride elopes with her first lover and the first act finishes. The realistic set is transformed into a surreal forest where two mythic figures - the Moon and Death - preside over a hunt to the death for the fugitives. The dry leaves covering the stage are reminders of the brittleness and brevity of life, and the creatively used spools of red thread symbolise how people's destinies become twisted and re-threaded.
Blood Moon is not a feel-good play, but it unveils the power that society has to stifle individuality. It is worth going just to see the menacing Moon, covered in blood, command centre stage.
NEARBY PLACES
SIMILAR EVENTS
-
Arts & Entertainment
Vivid Sydney 2022
Friday, May 27 - Saturday, June 18
Various locations across Sydney
BUY TICKETS -
Arts & Entertainment
Benched — Darlinghurst Theatre Company
Wednesday, May 25 - Sunday, May 29
Darlinghurst Theatre Company
BUY TICKETS -
Arts & Entertainment
Shreklesque — The Bad Collective
Friday, June 3 - Saturday, June 4
Enmore Theatre
BUY TICKETS -
Arts & Entertainment
An American in Paris
Friday, April 29 - Sunday, June 12
Theatre Royal Sydney
BUY TICKETS -
Arts & Entertainment
Moulin Rouge! The Musical
Saturday, May 28 - Sunday, September 25
Capitol Theatre Sydney
BUY TICKETS -
Arts & Entertainment
Mary Poppins
Sunday, May 15 - Sunday, July 3
Sydney Lyric Theatre, The Star
BUY TICKETS
NEARBY EVENTS
-
Arts & Entertainment
23rd Biennale of Sydney
Saturday, March 12 - Monday, June 13
Various locations across Sydney
-
Food & Drink
Australian Cocktail Month 2022
Sunday, May 1 - Tuesday, May 31
Various Sydney venues
BUY TICKETS -
Food & Drink
Taste of the Beaches 2022
Saturday, April 30 - Tuesday, May 31
Various Sydney venues
BUY TICKETS -
Food & Drink
Butter Ramen Club Tour 2022
Tuesday, April 19 - Monday, October 17
Various Sydney venues
Reader comments...