The Unquiet Grave of Garcia Lorca, Drayton Arms - theatre review: 'Damien Hasson plays a livewire Lorca'
Theatre critic-turned-playwright Nicholas de Jongh made a notable debut in 2008 with Plague over England, an elegant examination of the homophobic culture surrounding the 1953 arrest of John Gielgud for cottaging. He follows this with another thoughtful drama with homosexual inflections, investigating this time the death in 1936, at the hands of Franco’s thunderous troops, of that wonderful Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca.
De Jongh interweaves an ambitious number of strands, including recent revelations about Lorca’s last lover, a beautiful teenager named Juan (sultry Matthew Bentley) and, most fascinatingly, the shameful equivocation of an appeasement-obsessed British political establishment in the face of Franco’s Fascist threat. His passion for and deep knowledge of his subject matter is ever-evident, but it results at times in over-elliptical exchanges and a super-abundance of short, occasionally unnecessary scenes.
A six-strong cast take on a considerable number of roles and there is strong work from Damien Hasson as a livewire Lorca, dismissed by the Fascists as ‘the queer in a bowtie’. Director Hamish MacDougall stages the action stylishly on an attractive sand-covered set, which plays host to many unquiet, even unsettling, alliances.
Until Oct 25 (020 7835 2301, thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk)
