Writer: Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Director: Declan Donnellan
Cheek By Jowl’s Life Is a Dream takes the title rather literally, presenting Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s most famous work as one long dream sequence, and the effect is one of woozy magnificence.
But whose dream is it?
The bare plot would suggest it is Segismundo’s, a prince secretly locked up from birth because an oracle prophesied that he would bring terror and destruction to the land. As an experiment he is drugged and brought to the palace to see how he’ll behave and, when he inevitably behaves badly, he is again drugged and locked up, and told it was all a dream.
But looking on throughout this production is his father, the King, hosted by the court clown Clarin as his ghost-of-royal-future. He is privy to every scene, every private thought, every clandestine encounter, but able only to partake when he is called upon.
Opening the play with a line stolen from Segismundo much later in the story, “Perhaps I am dreaming, but I see myself awake”, he brings to mind Maggie Nelson’s idea that a king who says he is a king is just as mad as a madman who says he is one. Perhaps he is the one locked up, dreaming this royal fantasy.
It’s this hazy surrealism that makes this 17th-century play feel almost contemporary, an absurdist meditation on power and benevolence.
Arantxa Vela Buendia comments in the programme that for texts such as this, where the audience experiences whiplash moving between forest and court, prison and palace, it’s best to have a simple set in which the audience’s imagination is left to do the heavy lifting. Designer Nick Ormerod resolves this with a series of doors, from which performers burst out, as though each from their own personal dream or, in some cases, nightmare.
The doors appear to open from black nothingness until such time as Ganecha Gil’s artful lighting shows the bare back-stage, and the production briefly becomes a laugh-track-accompanied sitcom, only to be returned to pitch-darkness again as the dream begins to torment. This strange excursion feels a little unnecessary to the plot, but it’s a fun switch-up and adds to the theory that this could all be in the King’s head.
As per usual, Cheek By Jowl’s performances are strong across the board: Everyone treads the line between comical and spectral, buffoonery and expressionism. Alfredo Noval’s Segismundo is especially brilliant, swinging, sometimes violently, from the ridiculous to the enraged.
Goizalde Núñez’s Clarin, the courtier clown, is entirely endearing, embodying the well-known part of the jester who is considered so silly she is the only one free to speak the truth. Her physical comedy feels natural and unchoreographed, and where a Shakespearian jester often comes across as smug, she is genuinely likeable. But there is also something omnipotent about her, perhaps because of her silent role as dream guide to the King. Even in scenes where she says little to nothing, one looks to her for reassurance.
Two hours is a long time to sit through surtitles, but Cheek By Jowl has the unparalleled knack of making you forget you’re watching a Spanish play. You’d also be forgiven for thinking this was a somewhat modern script, the weird Shakespearian-style ending aside.
Runs until 16 April 2023
