Lope and Tirso Translated to the Boards of Bath’s Ustinov Studio

Presented by the Ustinov Studio, the Theatre Royal Bath, the Arcola Theatre, and the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, England. Curated by Laurence Boswell. Set and Costumes designed by Mark Bailey. Lighting designed by Ben Ormerod. Sound designed and composed by Jon Nicholls. Choreography and Movement directed by Lucy Cullingford. Fights directed by Terry King.

Punishment without Revenge [El castigo sin venganza] by Lope de Vega. 26 September-21 December 2013 (Ustinov Studio). Translated by Meredith Oakes. Directed by Laurence Boswell. With Chris Andrew Mellon (Ricardo/Rutillio), Jim Bywater (Febo), William Hoyland (Duke), Hedydd Dylan (Cintia), Nick Barber (Federico), Simon Scardifield (Batin), Frances McNamee (Cassandra), Annie Hemingway (Lucrecia), Doug Rao (Carlos, Marquis of Mantua), Katie Lightfoot (Aurora).

A Lady of Little Sense [La dama boba] by Lope de Vega. 12 September-21 December 2013 (Ustinov Studio). Translated by David Johnston. Directed by Laurence Boswell. With Simon Scardifield (Liseo), Chris Andrew Mellon (Turin/Duardo), Doug Rao (Leandro/Feniso/Pedro), William Hoyland (Otavio), Jim Bywater (Miseno/Rufino/Dance Master), Katie Lightfoot (Nise), Annie Hemingway (Celia), Frances McNamee (Finea), Hedydd Dylan (Clara), Nick Barber (Laurencio).

Don Gil of the Green Breeches [Don Gil de las calzas verdes] by Tirso de Molina. 19 September-20 December 2013 (Ustinov Studio). Translated by Sean O’Brien. Directed by Mehmet Ergen. With Hedydd Dylan (Donna Juana), Doug Rao (Don Martin), Katie Lightfoot (Donna Ines), William Hoyland (Don Pedro), Annie Hemingway (Donna Clara), Simon Scardifield (Don Juan), Chris Andrew Mellon (Quintana), Jim Bywater (Caramanchel/Don Diego), Nick Barber (Ossorio/Bailiff), Frances McNamee (Celia/Valdiviesa/Aguilara).

How different can Spanish theatre be, I thought as we set out for this, part of the Spanish Golden Age Season playing at the Theatre Royal’s smaller sister. […] How naive of me, for it turns out that just as world music takes the notes and instruments you are familiar with and creates something you’ve never heard before, so this magnificent production gives you a completely different view of drama.

(Alison Phillips)

Thus spake one critic of Laurence Boswell’s production of Punishment without Revenge in Meredith Oakes’s “pithy and pointed new translation” (Taylor), which stayed rather close to the original. It is not surprising that connoisseurs and devotees of Shakespeare, or of classical French theatre, might have perceived Spanish Golden Age plays to be “different,” not least because Punishment qua tragedy is built around the “inhumanity of the code’s inexorable laws and the vicious lengths to which people will go in order, technically, to save face” in comparison with “the easy-going, pragmatic manner of Falstaff (‘What is honour? A word’)” (Taylor); and because “Federico’s anecdotal manservant brightly demonstrates that Lope’s tragedy has a lighter side you certainly don’t find in Racine” (Billington, “Punishment”). If Michael Billington was “inevitably reminded of Euripides’s Hippolytus and Racine’s Phèdre,” he also thought that, “in its moral intricacy, Lope’s play is the equal of its twin rivals—and indeed, in some ways, far better.”

Critics also perceived affinities between A Lady of Little Sense and a professed Shakespearean counterpart: “[W]hile it festively celebrates love and marriage, it leaves a faintly acrid aftertaste. I was often reminded of The Taming of the Shrew” (Billington, “Lady”). And Mehmet Ergen’s production of Don Gil of the Green Breeches in the translation of poet Sean O’Brien, which sounded not only “authentic and accurate” but also “notably well-phrased” (Coveney), evoked “a distinct mirroring of some of the style of As You Like It and Twelfth Night, if not the poetry or the darker side of the Bard” (Mottram). Boswell and team were to be applauded for having striven “to test [the] patriotic complacency al máximo” of die-hard bardologists (Cavendish).

Punishment without Revenge (1631)

Boswell’s production had the feel of Velázquez in its black box space of polished glass trimmed in gold, where doors turned around to create physical space. A silver throne and luxurious costumes embellished the simple and spare set. In a preshow whose music had an aura of flamenco (characteristic of English productions of...