Despite the personnel turnover—or possibly because of it—Run of the Mill Theater, now into its fourth season, is keeping its eye on its mission of defying expectations. Its latest production, Federico García Lorca's 1933 masterpiece Blood Wedding, challenges you without alienating you. And this RoTM production takes this Andausian tragedy and plops it, flamenco dancing included, in the middle of Baltimore without a hint of awkwardness or fetishism. The stage is relatively bare—with the exception of a few well-placed props—but that only accentuates the work of costume designer Laura Ridgeway and director David Mitchell.
They have a great deal to deal with. García Lorca isn't just a storyteller and dramatist, but also a poet who was generally concerned with breaking down barriers between genres. The story itself is a no-holds-barred plunge into a whirlpool of lust, passion, and marriage. It moves occasionally into the surreal, but does so with a visionary, poetic precision that never lets anything get out of control.
Blood Wedding, simply stated, is every groom's nightmare: On the wedding night, the bride runs off into the woods with her old boyfriend. The hapless Groom (Praem J. Phulwani) is, as the Bride (Karen Landry) puts it, a "drop of water" who, she hopes, will cool her passions. Unfortunately for him, the drop of water isn't enough. Lurking in the woods, caught in an unhappy marriage, is her old paramour, Leonardo (James Caran), who sweeps her away. Significantly, he's the only character who gets a proper name. To make matters worse for the Groom, Leonardo's family helped kill his father and brother years earlier. The Groom's Mother (Lucie Poirier) isn't about to forget that. The wedding approaches, and with it, a justified sense of impending doom.
If you're expecting a triangle of archetypal Latin lovers, this production avoids that trap. As the Groom, Phulwani is appealing but wimpy—at least until he gets mad. And, in a measured performance as Leonardo, Caran is subdued, even a little frustrated. García Lorca is getting at something deeper, and the women in the play—who outnumber the men 4-to-1—are the ones who take us there. In widowed solitude, or as gossiping neighbors, horny maids, or unplucked violets, they're all in close touch with the force of lust in its most dangerous, bottled-up form.
Veteran actress Poirier delivers a magnetic performance as the widowed Mother, who's spent almost two decades dreaming about her husband, who died three years into their marriage. With Cassandra-like clarity, she tells her son that, with his new sweetheart, he's headed for trouble. Meanwhile, her own reveries about her long-dead husband are bursting with unconsummated desire. As the Servant, Salima Chandly gives the play its comic touch as an equally frustrated maid who is using the Bride to live out her fantasies of the Ultimate Wedding Night. Beverly Shannon, as Leonardo's Mother-in-Law, is a controlling presence, who sounds almost eager to rubberneck the wreckage of her daughter's marriage. Frank Vince, a welcome recent addition to Baltimore's theater community, offers a portrayal of the Bride's Father as a clueless tippler who can't wait for his daughter to start producing male children.
At the center of this is the Bride herself, through whom all these fantasies and romances and dramas are being played. Karen Landry, a recent UMBC theater graduate, shows real promise in a difficult role. Her Bride is an object of passion, but not a passive one. Even as she gets swept down the river, both by her husband and lover, she fights it every step of the way.
This list of principal characters, though, leaves out the chorus—a combination of woodcutters, neighbors, and young girls who give this play its ominous, classical tone. Director Mitchell has integrated them fluidly with skillful, economic blocking. As a result, and it's not to be taken for granted with García Lorca, the entire cast maintains the poet-playwright's artistic focus. The primary mover and shaker here is, for lack of a better phrase, the elemental force of human attraction. Without competing with one another, the characters warily circle around that element, letting it define itself. It's what they call artistic integrity, but don't let that scare you away: This is an enjoyable, well-acted, well-put-together production. And it's only here for one more weekend.
