Culture
19 Mar 08

Stage: The reign in Spain

The themes explored in Calderon's 17th century drama Life is a dream are contemporary enough to be filmed by Tarantino, contends director Tom Creed.

When Tom Creed compares Calderon’s 17th century Spanish drama Life Is A Dream to Quentin Tarantino’s film Kill Bill, the analogy is as sharp as, well, a Samurai sword. There is also no doubt that the Rough Magic production of the play Tom is directing will be as visceral and multi-layered as any Tarantino movie.

In fact, The New York Times describes Life Is A Dream as “part morality play, part fantastical allegory and part gut-grabbing revenge drama”, which could just as well describe Kill Bill, and is a description with which Creed totally agrees.
“The premise of the play is about a king who locks up his son at birth because there is a prophecy that he will become a tyrant and end up overthrowing his father,” he explains. “So, to avoid that, the king locks him away for life, then decides to cheat fate by letting him out and seeing how he behaves. Then, if he does end up behaving like a tyrant, they have arranged things so they can convince him everything is a dream. Yet then it becomes a play about what is human nature, what is morality, what is good and bad, and that’s what makes it a fantastical allegory that actually looks at how life is so fantastical it might all be a dream. That’s the play’s central idea and what the drama comes out of.”
So, what about the gut-grabbing revenge aspects of the play? Life Is A Dream itself, claims Tom, “is all bound up in questions of honour and revenge.” That, specifically, is why he compares it to Kill Bill.
“Well, the son, at one point, decides to get revenge on his father and it leads to civil war. And along with that there is a love triangle where a woman is out to get revenge, and that is straight out of Kill Bill. So, it also is about how people react when they have different loyalties, seek revenge, and in that sense, it is a big, existential blockbuster. It is astonishingly visceral actually. There is a lot of sex and violence. And I find plays such as this, from the Golden Age of Spanish theatre, much more accessible, say, than Shakespeare. Certainly, the 1998 translation we are using here, by Jo Clifford, clips along like a film, and while it deals with big ideas, all are dealt with by characters trying to deal with them in the moment. That’s why, overall, I find it by turns moving, shocking, truly exciting.”
Not surprisingly, part of Tom Creed’s excitement is based in the fact that this is the third play he has directed for Rough Magic, a company that has an almost mythical reputation in terms of Irish theatre, and, as Creed points out, are known for putting on plays like this. Rough Magic are also known for drawing out contemporary resonances in plays such as Life Is A Dream, something Creed is attempting to do this time round, with a cast that includes Peter Daly, Andrea Irvine and Siobhan McSweeney.
“We are looking at it very much in the context of now,” he says. “It’s not going to be in period costume and we are trying to find ways of making the political resonances of it, and the war, and royal family, all recognisably contemporary. It is hugely important for us that we make this play, which was written, after all, nearly four hundred years ago, speak to audiences as if it was written just yesterday. That, too, is why it is such and exciting and inspiring play to be working. It’s a delight.”