RADIO DRAMA REVIEWS ONLINE

Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca, in a version by Ted Hughes

Home
AUTHORS A-J
AUTHORS K-R
AUTHORS S-Z
DRAMATISTS A-Z
Contact Us

Blood Wedding on BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3, 16 March 2013
 
First broadcast in 2008, and the winner of the Sony Award for best drama that year, Pauline Harris' production cast an eerie fascination over the listeners' consciousness.
 
The play was first staged as long ago as 1933, and contains emotional, sociological and emotions elements that transcend time and place.  It is an ideal text for radio adaptation, where sonic elements can conjure up a dreamlike atmosphere, even while remaining rooted in a recognizable time and place.
 
The plot is straightforward.  Mother (Barbara Flynn) worries about her surviving son (Carl Prekopp) marrying a young woman (Sarah Smart), whose previous liaison was with Leonardo (William Ash), who is connected to the family that made Mother a near-childless widow. 
 
This scenario provides the springboard for a play that revels in its stylized dialogue (Ted Hughes' version proved ideal for this purpose), in a production where the standout performances included David Fleeshman's father of the bride and Mary Cunningham's frenetic neighbour. 
 
This was a heady, hypnotic production, at times creating an airless quality, with the actors speaking their lines very close to the microphone.