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Shakespeare in the Spanish theatre : 1772 to the present PDF

197 Pages·2010·1.591 MB·English
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Shakespeare in the Spanish Theatre Continuum Shakespeare Studies Shakespeare’s Cues and Prompts, Murray J. Levith Shakespeare and Moral Agency, Edited by Michael D. Bristol Shakespeare in China, Murray J. Levith Shakespeare in Japan, Tetsuo Kishi and Graham Bradshaw Forthcoming titles in the series: Shakespeare’s Musical Imager, Christopher R. Wilson Shakespeare and the Translation of Identity in Early Modern England, Edited by Liz Oakley-Brown Shakespeare in the Spanish Theatre 1772 to the Present Keith Gregor Continuum International Publishing Group Continuum London Continuum New York The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704 11 York Road New York London SE1 7NX NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Keith Gregor 2010 Keith Gregor has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as the Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-0-8264-9934-9 (hardback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group Contents Acknowledgements vi List of Illustrations viii Introduction 1 1 The Taste for Tragedy 7 2 False Beginnings 26 3 The Birth of Character 46 4 Disaster and Regeneration 66 5 The Franco Years 85 6 The Transition and Beyond 104 7 Shakespeare on the ‘Periphery’ 123 8 New Horizons 143 Notes 158 References 171 Index 179 Acknowledgements This book is my modest contribution to a research project, now in its tenth year, devoted to the study of the reception of Shakespeare in Spain in the framework of his reception in the rest of Europe. I am extremely grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (now the Ministry of Science and Innova- tion) for fi nancing the project through concessions HUM-2005-02556 and FFI-2008-01969 and to the University of Murcia (Vicerrectorado de Investig- ación) for managing it so effi ciently. Most of the groundwork for this volume was done at theatres, theatre archives and libraries up and down the country, and I owe a further debt of gratitude to the institutions and companies that have shown an interest in the project and to the individuals who have given their time to help me carry it through. In particular, I should like to thank the Centro de Documentación Teatral, Fundación Juan March, Archivo de la Villa, Biblioteca Nacional and Real Academia in Madrid; in Barcelona, the Institut de Teatre; in Seville, the Centro Andaluz de Teatro; in Almagro, the Museo Nacional de Teatro and its director, Andrés Peláez, and the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. The Centro Dramático Nacional, the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, Teatre Lliure and the Teatre Romea in Barcelona, the Centro Dramático Galego and Eduardo Alonso’s Teatro do Noroeste in Galicia have been responsive to my (at times) overly persistent demands for information and material. The list of individuals whom I would like to thank publicly for their assistance and support would be too long to print here; I must therefore confi ne myself to those who have given particularly generously of their time. Elena Bandín, Juanfra Cerdá, Laura Campillo, Nicolás Montalbán and Jesús Tronch have been mines of information and, without the material they so selfl essly provided, there are whole swathes of this book which it would have taken me many more months to prepare. Clara Calvo, Paco Florit, Jorge Luis Bueno and David George were kind enough to read sections of it while Ángel Luis Pujante read the complete script. Most of their valuable suggestions I have taken on board though, need- less to say, any responsibility for the errors and lacunae that remain is entirely mine. Pete Brew, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Dirk Delabastita, Paul Franssen, José Manuel González, Lawrence Guntner, Ton Hoenselaars, Glyn Pursglove, Fran Rayner, Gary Taylor and Jo de Vos have all been inspirational, either by being good enough to share their views on ‘foreign’ Shakespeare or by giving me the Acknowledgements vii chance to air some of my own in a variety of forums. I should also like to acknowledge the assistance of Gloria Pérez and Nuria Clavero in the prepara- tion of a complete database of Shakespearean productions (www.um.es/shake- speare) which I have drawn partly upon here. I am especially grateful to Continuum, and to Colleen Coalter, for having faith with this project and for responding so readily and speedily to my enquiries. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife, Encarni, and my son, Alex, for their infi nite patience and understanding. It is to them that this book is dedicated. List of Illustrations FRONT COVER. Alfredo Alcón (Lear) and Miryam Gallego (Cordelia) in the 2008 production of King Lear by the Centro Dramático Nacional, directed by Gerardo Vera. (Photo by Ros Ribes, courtesy of the Centro Dramático Nacional.) Figure 1.1 Isidoro Máiquez as Othello. Lithograph by José Ribelles y Helip, c. 1820. (Courtesy of the Museo Romántico, Madrid.) 20 Figure 5.1 Lady Macbeth (Mercedes Prendes) greets Duncan in the Español’s 1942 production of Macbeth, directed by Cayetano Luca de Tena. (Photo by Ortíz, courtesy of the Centro de Documentación Teatral, Madrid.) 91 Figure 5.2 Kate (Nuria Torray) harangues the market-place in the 1975 produc- tion of La nueva fi erecilla domada [The New Taming of the Shrew], directed by Juan Guerrero Zamora. (Photo by Manuel Martínez Muñoz, courtesy of the Centro de Documentación Teatral, Madrid.) 103 Figure 6.1 Hamlet (José Luis Gómez) upbraids Ophelia (Ana Belén) in the CDN’s 1989 production of Hamlet, directed by José Carlos Plaza. (Photo by Chicho, courtesy of the Centro de Documentación Teatral.) 111 Figure 7.1 The chess-board set in Teatre Lliure’s 1979 production of Titus Andronic (Titus Andronicus), directed by Fabià Puigserver. (Photo by Luis C ristóbal, courtesy of Teatre Lliure and the Centro de Documentación Teatral.) 127 Figure 7.2 Female bonding in Ur-teatro’s 1992 production of Sueño de una noche de verano (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), directed by Helena Pimenta for Ur Teatro. (Photo by Daniel Alonso, courtesy of the Centro Documentación Teatral.) 133 Figure 8.1 Xosé Manuel Oliveira as ‘Führer’ in the CDG’s 2004 production of Ricardo III (Richard III), directed by Manuel Guede for the Centro Dramático Galego. (Photo courtesy of the Centro Dramático Galego-Axencia Galega das Industrias Culturais.) 153 Introduction In August 2004 the summer review of the Spanish national newspaper El País ran an article on what it called the ‘vital and renewed addiction to Shakespeare’. The article was a response to the fact that, at the time, a dozen or so different Shakespearean productions, including Helena Pimenta’s The Tempest, Calixto Bieito’s King Lear and Àlex Rigola’s Julius Caesar, were touring the country.1 This was ‘neither a fever nor an epidemic,’ the piece continued, but a ‘pure addiction to the strongest drug the theatre has ever known and whose name is William Shakespeare’. Even allowing for the hyperboles which are, after all, common practice in today’s cultural journalism, the article alludes to a phe- nomenon that can be easily verifi ed: namely, that Shakespeare is today the most widely performed of all foreign playwrights; that in production terms, his work outscores the combined dramatic efforts of all of Spain’s classical authors, and that, contrary to the efforts of such reputable and inventive companies as the National Classical Theatre Company, his popularity shows no signs of waning. The reason for writing a book on Shakespeare on the Spanish stage was to address this phenomenon. Given the wealth and depth of Spain’s own dramatic tradition as well as the rigour and intensity of the efforts to recover it, how is it possible that the work of a contemporary foreigner – to boot, an Englishman – could be allowed to steal the theatrical limelight? What could modern produc- ers possibly fi nd in Shakespeare that was not crying out for attention or promised heaps of ‘relevance’ (and commercial success) in the plays of Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca or the prolifi c Lope de Vega? Why is it that the organizers of such spectacular theatrical events as the Almagro Classical Theatre Festival consistently bill more shows by Shakespeare than by any native author? What has taken place for Shakespeare to have been granted his own festival – the annual Shakespeare Festival in Santa Susanna (Barcelona) – when there is no such author-specifi c event for any of his Spanish contemporaries? Also, how is it that Shakespeare has risen so effortlessly to the position he now seems to hold when Spanish ‘Golden Age’ drama has, despite the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) season of Spanish plays billed at the same time audiences in Spain were getting ‘hooked’ on Shakespeare, failed to enjoy anything like the same success in the United Kingdom?2 It would be patently wrong, and I would be committing the same kind of exaggeration as mentioned above, to suggest that the current Shakespeare

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