Michael Rosete (Manrique) and Andres de Vengoechea (Flores). Credit: Nikolitsa Boutieros
Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna, written sometime between 1612 and 1614, chronicles the rebellion of Spanish peasants against a tyrannical overlord at a time when Spain was in the throes of forming itself as a modern empire. The Nylon Fusion Collective brings Adrian Mitchell's translation of de Vega's script to the stage in a production that, while spirited and earnest, lacks sharpness in both execution and conception.
The story underlying Fuente Ovejuna concerns how battles among the aristocracy for what they see as their rights and privileges visit destruction upon defenseless people, and what those people do to restore order and decency to their lives. In this case, the aristocratic offender is Commander Guzman (Justin Maruri), a member of the Order of Calatrava, who acts as if every woman in the town, married or not, is his to possess and who punishes anyone who questions his actions.
The good peasants of Fuente Ovejuna suffer his depredations until he goes too far by raping Laurencia (Katherine Barron) and imprisoning her new husband Frondoso (Seth James). Laurencia, brandishing her wounds, shames the men into taking up arms, and together with the enraged women, they all dispatch Guzman and his henchmen. Word of their rebellion reaches the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, who send a judge to learn the truth of the matter (using, as the judge says later, all the approved methods of torture). None of the people departs from the agreed-upon answer to the judge's question "Who killed Commander Guzman?": "Fuente Ovejuna" everyone replies.
In a final scene of reconciliation, the good people of Fuente Ovejuna meet with the king and queen to pledge their loyalty, in return for which they are absolved of their crimes, and peace comes to the now-unified Spain.
The production boasts two musicians who provide inter-scene music as well as accompaniment for the several dance and choral numbers in the show, and director Andy Goldberg makes good use of the theater's open spaces, even projecting shadows of prisoners being tortured on the walls behind the audience.
However, Mr. Goldberg should have worked more closely with his actors to enunciate more clearly -- many of them swallowed their words, and at times it sounded as if they were racing through their lines rather than performing the text. Exceptions to this were Jorge Humberto Hoyos, who as Esteban, the village leader, brought a sharp dignity to the character, and Katherine Barron, who caught Laurencia's mix of defiance and devotion. And his direction could have used more specificity -- too often his group scenes felt unshaped, and he seemed unfamiliar with how to direct a play done essentially in-the-round.
And then the question, Why do this play now? George Bernard Shaw felt that we do history plays not as history lessons (which we can get from a textbook) but as examinations of the history of our own time. This production of Fuente Ovejuna has within it much that can resonate with a contemporary audience, not only about torture and the waging of fruitless wars, but about how people, in the name of collective values, can resist the abuses of imperial power. Yet Nylon Fusion Collective has chosen to present this as a straight-forward effort, and while mostly pleasant and at times moving, the production lacks a conceptual focus that would give it more bite and boldness. There is much to like here -- but there could so much more.
(June 2010)