The Lorca Summer Festival: Blood Wedding

Plays by Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca can be tricky to produce. They juxtapose stylized prose with poetic verse, and are wide open for creative physical interpretation. Pangs Theater is offering three of his tragedies for its summer festival, and the first, Blood Wedding, struggles to balance these elements. First staged in 1933, Lorca's most famous play details two volatile lovers who marry others but can't ignore their original primal attractions. Ultimately, this leads to bloody tragedy. Lorca thickens the drama with the politics of marriage, land inheritance, and murder. Director Wolfgang Thompson has paced this stylized production very lethargically. Overly long scene changes and actors who speak in measured and emotionless cadences sap the tension (and even elicit laughter) in Lorca's script. The end of act one feels like the season finale of a Spanish telenovela. The lush costumes are fabulous and some scenes resonate, such as the initial awkward meeting of the in-laws, but this production hasn't properly meshed its style with the material.