Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna: A Classic Political Drama Filtered Through a Postmodern Lens

Though less known in the English-speaking world, Lope de Vega’s influence on both Spanish-language theater and European theater is considerable. Vega was a prolific writer, and one of his best known works, Fuenteovejuna, is currently running at GALA Hispanic Theatre courtesy of a new adaptation by contemporary Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga.

Written in 1613, Fuenteovejuna is set in 1476, seven years into the marriage of Queen Isabella I of Castille and King Ferdinand II of Aragon as they were consolidating their power in Spain. The play is based on a historical event in which the people of the eponymous town, mostly populated farmers and ranchers, rise up and kill Fernán Gómez de Guzmán (Iker Lastra). When the play opens, Guzmán is the local commander of the Order of Calatrava, a Catholic military order led by the then-20-year-old Rodrigo Telléz Girón (Edwin Bernal).

The historical record is that Guzmán and his knight sexually assaulted and trafficked the woman of the town. Vega (and Mayorga) dramatize this via Guzmán pursuing Laurencia (Julia Adun). Soon he develops a vendetta against both Laurencia for refusing him, and her lover Frondoso (Samy Khalil) for coming to her defense. Guzmán and his knights (Luz Nicolás, as one of Guzmán’s lieutenants, Flores, exudes the most menacing body language) eventually act on this vendetta by disrupting the couple’s wedding festivities and abducting the two. Unlike the English theater of the time, the Spanish theater cast women in speaking roles, so De Vega gave Laurencia a character arc that may begin with her as a feisty ingénue, but by the end, she’s the play’s protagonist. When she arrives at the town meeting battered, bloody, and abused, it’s her speech that rallies the men to rise up against their oppressors.

Despite the historical setting, however,  this production directed by José Luis Arellano is presented with a postmodern minimalist aesthetic. Scenic designer Giorgos Tsappas has created a sandy stage on which the actors are constantly tracking footprints and bootprints along a curved back wall, painted to look like stained concrete. A wooden bench curving concentrically to the wall gives a place for the actors who are not performing to sit and watch others play out their scenes. One aspect of the scenic design, however, is not clear until very late in the play—a large ball hangs from a cable, almost grazing the sand. Its practical or symbolic purpose is left mysterious until its final scene. Was it the wrecking ball aimed at the old feudal order, so that a direct monarchy can take charge?

To stage left stands DJ Aldo Ortega spinning dance music whenever it’s time for the people of Fuenteovejuna to celebrate; sometimes mingling among them. Ortega, who plays guitar and percussion, is also the production’s composer, providing a live progressive-rock score for the show.

In keeping with the postmodern aesthetic, lighting and projection designer Jesús Díaz Cortes has set up a camera to project an occasional live feed of the performance from the vantage point of the lighting rig, projecting a distorted secondary version of events onto the curved wall behind the actors. Costume designer Cidney Forkpah has chosen to dress most of the cast in simple contemporary black-and-white attire, with the Knights of Calatrava clothed like a motorcycle gang in leather jackets and boots. The one exception is the queen, who is dressed in a conservative blue suit festooned with medals and ribbons—blue being the color of Spain’s conservative Christian People’s Party. Forkpah has also crafted sheep masks worn by the townspeople in a wordless scene: Rarely has a flock of ruminants ever seemed so menacing.

Of course, when a postmodern aesthetic is applied to a classical play about a revolution, it’s worth asking what Fuenteovejuna’s politics mean today? De Vega wrote his patriotic historical drama to affirm a strong monarchy and Mayorga’s adaptation does not suggest that the populist rebellion is remotely democratic. The men of the town may have listened to the women’s demands for justice and overthrown a local tyrant, but they explicitly demand direct rule by the Catholic Monarchs (a title that Pope Alexander VI would officially grant the royal couple in 1494). And though most American students recall 1492 as the year Christopher Columbus set sail on behalf of Spain, it was also the year that the country accomplished military victory over Muslim forces in Granada, and then proceeded to give the entire Jewish population of Spain an ultimatum: conversion, expulsion, or death. But the Monarchs were good for Fuenteovejuna, and Fuenteovejuna was very good to them.

Fuenteovejuna, by Lope de Vega, adapted by Juan Mayorga and directed by José Luis Arellano, runs through March 2 at GALA Hispanic Theatre. Spanish with English subtitles; translation by Heather McKay. galatheatre.org. $25–$50.