La Vida es Sueno, or Life is a Dream, is the University’s latest offering at the Playhouse. Playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca tackles themes of love, loyalty and existentialism, way before existentialism was even cool. This international team of actors and directors brings us a dark and gripping, yet at times comical, story of a man who is torn from riches to rags and back so many times that he begins to question the essence of his own reality.
The play is framed by the Oracle’s monologues, recounting how his own premonition of a brutal ruler led the Polish King, Basilio, to imprison his own son Segismundo. However, the monarch has decided that he should test the veracity of the prophecy by allowing his son to enter his kingdom as the Prince of Poland. Proving the Oracle correct, Segismundo is shortly drugged and thrown back into his cell, having unleashed murder and rape upon the courtiers who dare to contravene his orders. Believing it to have been a dream, Segismundo can’t quite trust in the world that he finds around him upon his second release, this time at the hands of a group of rebels who wish to seize the throne in his name. The challenge, for Segismundo, is to navigate the path between dream and reality, loyalty and betrayal, cruelty and mercy, fate and free will. A number of parallel storylines of love triangles and family reunions provide a welcome relief from the dark depths of the play’s central plot.
The action is set against an unforgiving backdrop of serrated edges and red lighting, an effective complement to the darkness and torment of Segismundo’s character, passionately conveyed by Antón Morant. The musical accompaniment, however, was shrill and jarring, detracting from the linguistic beauty of the script. Whilst a certain amount of melodrama is inherent in the work, the sound effects- along with certain elements of the direction- at times pushed the play from drama into farce, provoking laughter from the audience in moments of supposed gravity.
The true comic element of the play is almost entirely carried by the excellent Teresita Valverde Mójica, whose dance with ‘Death’ was an inspired and hilarious highlight. Another standout performance comes from Ekaterina Spivakovsky Gonzalez, whose subtle and sensitive performance as Rosaura brilliantly captured the depth of her character. The rest of the cast gave mostly decent performances, and largely maintained the eloquence of Calderón’s verse, although the positioning of the subtitles was at times distracting.
On balance, this was an entertaining and thoughtful depiction; an extremely challenging task which highlights the skill of those involved and shows the continuing relevance of Calderón’s work today.
