AustLit

'The year was 1932. Spain was enjoying an exhilarating period of enormous artistic energy. Federico Garcia Lorca was thriving creatively, invigorated by friendships with the likes of filmmaker Luis Buñuel and a young, wonderfully eccentric Salvador Dali. But despite Blood Wedding growing from this hotbed of creative freedom, Lorca chose to set the play in a world of stifling oppression; a world which ominously foreshadowed the future for both the playwright and the nation. Just four years after this enthralling tragedy of thwarted love, desire and heartbreak was written, the Spanish Civil War erupted and Lorca was executed by the Fascists on suspicion of being homosexual.

Blood Wedding begins with a son announcing his intention to marry. News to be celebrated by all but his mother, whose joy is smothered by a terrible feeling of fear and foreboding. His intended is good, modest and hardworking. So why does the utterance of this sweet girl's name feel like a rock in his mother's face?

History pulses through the veins of the tiny rural community; the passions and blood shed in its past cannot be washed away with water. While the mother is haunted by ghosts of the past, her would be daughter-in-law is gripped by a phantom of her own. An all-consuming lust has taken possession of the girl, bringing with it the threat of humiliation, vilification and ultimately destruction.' Source: (Sighted 11/08/2011).