BLOOD WEDDING

Omnibus Theatre

★★★★

“The dynamics are beautifully conveyed by the actors in wonderfully genuine performances”

One of the most telling lines in Barney Norris’ adaptation of Lorca’s “Blood Wedding” is when the young bride, Georgie proclaims ‘I can’t remember what’s good about me’. The mix of fear and confusion in the eyes epitomises not just Nell Williams’ extraordinary performance, but also the nature of the play in which we are repeatedly taken aback by powerful moments of poignancy that burst through the comedic surface. It is a multi-layered piece that brings Lorca’s tragedy right up to date into a very relatable English rural setting. We are in a Wiltshire village on the edge of Salisbury Plain. A seemingly ordinary backwater peopled by everyday characters. Don’t be fooled. Alex Marker’s realistic set places the action around the back of a village hall, but we are somehow thrown into the world of folklore too.

Georgie and Rob (Christopher Neenan) are checking out the slightly run-down venue for their wedding reception. Rob’s mother, Helen (Alix Dunmore), is tagging along, anxious to convey her misgivings about the whole affair. The dynamics are beautifully conveyed by the actors in wonderfully genuine performances that match the natural flow of the dialogue. There is much humour, but small details and verbal tics hint at the darkness that is to come. Director Tricia Thorns is very in tune with the subtleties, often allowing the characters to look out to the audience yet still staying within their own world.

Neenan’s Rob is a delight. With his soft West Country accent, his instantly loveable personality has a simplicity and honesty that Williams’ gently mocking Georgie cannot resist. Nor can we as we root for this couple, despite the protestations of Helen and her severe abandonment complex. Dunmore can switch between caring mother and prophet of doom with remarkable ease while displaying the guilt of not imposing either with enough force. Enter Brian, the village hall’s caretaker. Initially hilarious, his role develops into that of the all-seeing sage. A remarkable performance from David Fielder that shifts into the surreal as he takes on the spiritual symbolism of Lorca’s original text, leading us dramatically towards the bloody and disturbing climax.

But before we get there, we meet Georgie’s old schoolfriend, Danni (Esme Lonsdale) and her bad-boy, Irish traveller husband Lee (Kiefer Moriarty). Lee is Georgie’s ex, and because he reappears on the day of Georgie’s wedding, we can’t help but get a sense of what is coming, whether we are familiar with Lorca’s play or not. Lonsdale gives a real strength to Danni, ably standing up to Moriarty’s slightly unconvincing menace. One of the few inconsistencies of the piece comes with the nagging disbelief that Georgie would be prepared to flee her own wedding and run off with Lee.

Fielder’s Brian tells us that ‘there is more to me than meets the eye’. A statement that can describe this play. The powerful shift in mood and style in the second act could easily have jarred, but in the hands of this talented company it is impressive, and Fielder comes to the fore with a commanding potency. The tears he has in his eyes towards the end seem genuine, and we are impelled to join him. The final epilogue, set a year after the events, is in danger of unnecessarily dragging out the ending, but it neatly sews up of the threads of the story. A tale of the fears and dreams, not just of the newly wed protagonists, but of all of us. Barney Norris has said that he wanted to build a new kind of mythology with this adaptation, particularly to the part of England where he has set the narrative. On that level he succeeds, but his play also has the gift to entertain which, in turn, is a real gift for the audience.

BLOOD WEDDING

Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed on 2nd May 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Phil Gammon

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE GUEST | ★★★★★ | April 2025

VANYA IS ALIVE | ★★★★ | February 2025

THE ICE AT THE END OF THE WORLD | ★★★★ | September 2024

MY LIFE AS A COWBOY | ★★★ | August 2024

HASBIAN | ★★★★ | June 2024

COMPOSITOR E | ★★★ | September 2023

BLOOD WEDDING

★★★

“the play as a whole is genuinely very funny”

Meeting for a secret liaison in the Westminster Hotel, Tory junior minister Rebecca Willey gleefully urges special advisor to the opposition, John Worthington, to put on his “jim-jams” in preparation for the night of adultery ahead. The champagne and oysters are already on their way by the time Willey pulls back the curtains only to discover a limp body hanging across the windowsill. Attempting to move the body out of the hotel suite and evade discovery, any plans for the night are completely derailed as Willey (Elizabeth Elvin), Worthington (Raphael Bar), and Mrs. Willey’s PA, Georgia Pigden (Felicity Duncan) are tangled in an increasingly ludicrous web of lies.

‘It’s Her Turn Now’, adapted by Michael J. Barfoot and directed by David Warwick, is a gender-swapped take on Ray Cooney’s classic farce ‘Out of Order’. All of the action takes place in one room, a hotel suite set brilliantly designed by Alex Marker. A number of doors and, of course, the central sash window, allow the characters to revolve dizzyingly across the stage as Willey stands at the centre and struggles to maintain control as her life, and later her government, falls apart around her. This makes for some great moments of physical comedy, especially in Willey and Pigden’s manipulation of the corpse, and the play as a whole is genuinely very funny.

The central change replaces Cooney’s original male MP Richard Willey with the female MP Rebecca Willey, and the swap is quite effective, thanks in large part to Elvin and Duncan’s excellent performances as the conniving Mrs. Willey and the unfortunately implicated Georgia Pigden, respectively. The new dynamics that emerge refresh the play out of the overdone, and Barfoot’s writing plays on the swap humorously. That said, it nevertheless remains very safe, and somehow still manages to feel slightly old-fashioned: every swap, for example, is carefully carried through so that each romantic pairing remains a heterosexual one. The stakes are never really altered in any significant way.

“a refreshingly funny, well-acted and well-done take on the farce”

In a similar vein, despite a few moments of knowing wink-wink reference to the apparently perennially deceitful nature of politics, attempts at political bite are never really genuine: perhaps a missed opportunity, considering the not-so-distant memories of a certain health secretary. This is farce, however, and, while Big Ben looms through the window, the play never purports to be political. Our attention must instead be focused on the microcosm of disaster playing out in this one room.

Characters are rapidly accumulated as Willey, Pigden, and Worthington embroil themselves in deceit. However, as the play progresses, the pleasure of the double-triple-quadruple bluff does dwindle, and the fast and sinuous plotting of the first act is somewhat lost as the play becomes bloated and unwieldy with its own deceptions. I especially thought that the early interactions between Nurse Foster (carer of Pigden’s aging father, played by Jules Brown) and Georgia Pigden were a missed opportunity. Had the writing been marginally less focused on deception here, this could be a genuinely heartwarming moment. Instead, by the time the play tries to use it for denouement, the interaction has somewhat lost its power and become just another half-truth.

While the ending doesn’t seem quite tied-up enough to justify the increasingly convoluted plotting, and while the production remains, on the whole, quite offense-less, this was, overall, a refreshingly funny, well-acted and well-done take on the farce, that just about manages to pull off the gender-swap without taking advantage of it for cheap jokes.

Tag Archives: Alex Marker

BLOOD WEDDING

★★★★

Omnibus Theatre

BLOOD WEDDING

Omnibus Theatre

★★★★

“The dynamics are beautifully conveyed by the actors in wonderfully genuine performances”