Cheek by Jowl presents Life is a Dream
Barbican Theatre April 2023
How often do you hear anyone speaking Spanish? In London the answer is, Nearly never. Yet flamenco dance and music have a loyal public here, and the theatre company Cheek by Jowl, collaborating for the first time with a Spanish cast, came close to selling out its four performances of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s verse play, Life is a Dream.
First performed in 1635 and now considered a classic of the Spanish Golden Age, the play is so well known at home that viewers often recite the lines aloud with the actors. Here, however, it turns up about every 10 years; I found reviews of English-language productions at the Barbican in 1999, at the Donmar Warehouse in 2009, and at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh in 2021, postponed from 2019.
Unsure of anything but the reassuring presence of English surtitles and the two-hour running time, I became, inadvertently, part of Calderón’s philosophical premise: if nothing is certain, the play demands, what are the consequences? His answers draw us into a maze of conflicts between reality and dreams, identity and disguise, free will and fate, and fathers and sons. “What a confusing labyrinth is this where reason cannot find a thread,” declares one character at the start, subtly alerting us to the emotional turmoil that follows.
Imprisoned by his father because of a prophecy foretelling his cruel, inhuman nature, prince Segismundo cries, “How have I offended heaven to punish me so?” Having explained his attempt to protect the country, the king changes his mind and releases his son to rule: “Am I dreaming,” the bewildered prisoner asks, ”or am I not me?”
In a reckless burst of new-found power, he kills a man to win a bet; fearing the ancient prophecy is coming true, the king instantly returns him to prison. “Is this me, chained and imprisoned?” Segismundo wonders. Miraculously freed again, he can only exclaim, “Not again?!”
Every twist has a reason, and every reason can be turned inside out. And I haven’t even mentioned the woman, disguised as a man, who’s mistaken for her twin brother or the king’s niece and nephew, who lay plans to marry and claim the crown. Rather than slowing the surreal rush of events, the director Declan Donnellan distilled their intricate deceits into a brief passage of farce, complete with a saucy seduction, which gave us a chance to catch our breath.
As the narrative shifted from prison to palace to forest, Donnellan’s beautifully choreographed staging and Nick Ormerod’s set—a free-standing wall of swinging doors—guided us unerringly through Calderón’s search for the elusive meaning of reality. A single mimed slap stopped the farcical humor dead; a real shower drenched Segismundo as his guards prepared him to leave his cell and ascend his throne.
Is Segismundo ever free or is his freedom only imaginary? Is he a legitimate ruler or dangerously ambitious? Are we any different? The houselights crept up during several scenes to involve the audience as the city’s citizens and the assembled throng at court. Soft light briefly illuminated the empty space behind the wall of doors, reminding us that the reality so carefully established by the players was itself an illusion.
Except for the hilarious conga line Segismundo led through the palace (and into the auditorium), Donnellan sidestepped dance entirely, choosing ordinary gestures, magnified by passion, to spread natural manners on apparently irrational behavior. Fully aware that movement can’t capture slippery subjects by imitating their vagaries, he imposed physical reality, in solid recognizable form, on every enigmatic contradiction. Sometimes it takes more than words, in any language, to realize complex ideas.
Cheek by Jowl tours Life is a Dream to Spain, Hungary and Portugal until July 22. See cheekbyjowl.com