Writer andDirector: Jade Alvara
We often think of the Industrial Revolution as the period when machinery massively increased outputs, turning crafts that were once slow, meticulous processes into mass-produced factory lines. But all those factories relied heavily on human workers, often poorly paid and exploited, so that the owners could profit.
For the women in Jade Alvara’s Folklorica, there are additional concerns. All immigrants from one part of Latin America who have travelled to another part of the continent, they share a strict boarding house at night while working in a factory all day. For Mira (Nicole Schretlen Montes), there seems to be a bright spot when she meets a handsome and charming young man; he walks her to a nearby hilltop, above the factory-created smog, and they share a love of the stars.
But the next day, his identity is revealed. Solal Vergara Costantini’s Richard Malus is the new factory owner and is even more ruthless and demanding than any previous boss. He cuts wages, demands increased output, and regards the women of the factory as his sexual playthings.
Constantini’s character never again displays the (admittedly slightly cheesy) charm of his opening scene, becoming a Latino equivalent of a moustache-twirling villain from a Victorian music hall melodrama. Nuance rarely makes its presence felt in Folklorica. That’s true in such characterisations, but they are driven by a script which all too often takes easy paths.
As Mira works with her colleagues, each has an archetype that they play to, notably Grecia Castillo De La Paz’s sexually frank Gloria and Sandra Vergara as the devoutly Catholic Micaela. But once away from the rigid positions of their factory work, director Jade Alvara struggles to elicit much in the way of character from her blocking. The five women tend to stand round in a line waiting for their cue lines to speak, enforcing a sense of laboured rigidity that does the play no favours.
Matters improve as the friends help Mira seek out the help of a local medicine woman (Alvara) to induce an abortion after Malus has raped her. The subsequent potion-induced dream sequence, with its scene of folk dancing and singing in traditional Latina costumes, offers a welcome change of pace. And yet it, too, is so on the nose as to be worthy of inducing groans: in Mira’s dream, Costantini is first the devil and then transformed into a pig. One of the ears of his porcine mask is tagged with a label declaring him to be “the 1%”, just in case we were unclear about the obvious allegories in the story.
As the women travel to and from the witch’s home, they also witness the devastation on the local wildlife caused by the pollution from the factory that gives them all work. And again, while Folklorica may be set in Industrial Revolution-era Latin America, everything is so blunt and on the nose that its message feels trite.
Amidst all this, Montes is a genuinely bright spark, wringing some emotional depth from a character that, like all around her, has little such complexity on the page. But even with her efforts, Folklorica does not so much hold a mirror up to ourselves as bash us over the head repeatedly. As a call to arms, a little subtlety and nuance to accompany the bouts of magical realism would go a long way.
Runs until 20 September 2025
