“Blood Wedding”
Odyssey Theatre
Through August 14

In the world of theater, a classic is everything that the Odyssey Theatre’s production of “Blood Wedding” is not.

Although Tanya Ronder’s 2005 English adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Andalusian rural tragedy holds true to the Spaniard’s poetic language and rough agrarian setting, the play falls apart in the hands of director Jon Lawrence Rivera.

The story is simple enough. The Groom (Willie Fortes), a young, hard-working vineyard owner, wants to marry his beautiful bride (Nikki McKenzie), despite her somewhat mysterious past. The prenuptial conflict comes mostly from the boy’s mother (Sharon Omi) who is reluctant to approve the wedding when she learns that the Bride has connections to the Felixes, the clan responsible for the murder of her husband and older son. The marriage proceeds, however, and the newlyweds appear to be bound for matrimonial bliss until an old lover, the hot-blooded Leonardo (Joshua Zar), steals the Bride away during the wedding party, causing communal discord and setting the violent stage for the climax of the aptly titled tragedy.

Ronder’s translation reads like a prime example of early 20th-century poetic realism. The heightened language expresses the characters’ psyche and desires while still giving enough concrete details to propel the plot forward. Garcia Lorca’s text (or at least Ronder’s translation) is not easy to tackle because the style shifts during the production. As the play leaves the comfort of the wedding party and enters the dark and visually unkempt woods, the images, themes and language take a turn toward magical realism. Intimate domestic scenes leave the poetry behind and adopt harsh naturalism to show the characters’ pragmatic grit.

These jumps in tone require both director and actors to be flexible in their interpretation, but unwavering in their understanding of the characters’ ultimate goals, personalities and destinies. Instead of using each stylistic mode (poetic realism, magical realism and naturalism) as a vehicle to convey a different facet of their characters, the actors fall prey to their uninspired one-dimensional interpretation of their roles. Zar’s Leonardo, for example, ought to embrace the terse rural language of his dialogue with his wife as a demonstration of their repetitive lives together, while using Garcia Lorca’s poetry in his conversations with the Bride to show his unsettled mind torn between duty and passion. Instead, Zar just seems angry all the time.

Ronder’s adaptation places “Blood Wedding” in 1950s Central California, a plausible albeit unnecessary update meant to preserve the original’s rural and Spanish elements. Rivera misses the mark by taking Garcia Lorca’s work even further from its Spanish roots. The director adds Filipino flair to the play through traditional lullabies, haphazardly placed Tagalog phrases, Filipino wedding garb and other such elements that obfuscate the play’s time and place.

Omi as the bitter, lamenting mother, is severe, but enjoyable to watch. Her performance is a silver lining in a monsoon of otherwise atrocious acting as most cast members equate the play’s high level of emotion with thoughtless shouting matches. And when the mood turns toward the magical, the personified Moon (Ochuwa Oghie) and Death (Robert Almodovar) are extremely ineffective at conveying the sublime, although they have a certain penchant for the histrionic and creepy.

All in all, “Blood Wedding” will appeal to few beyond friends and family of the cast, offering very little to theatergoers in terms of innovation, authenticity, dramatic precision and maturity. With nothing worthwhile to keep the audience in their seats, the actors are lucky that the show is performed without an intermission.