Shakespeare in the Spanish Theatre: 1772 to the Present (Continuum Shakespeare Studies)

197 Pages·2010·1.492 MB·English

by  Keith Gregor

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
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© 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