- Celestina
A Classic Masterpiece of the Spanish Theatre
Celestina, written by Fernando de Rojas in 1499 is a classic masterpiece of the Spanish theatre about a wily and manipulative brothel keeper. Calixto Bieto, (who had great success with his brilliant modern day production of Hamlet at the Festival 2003,) was invited to direct a new updated English language version translated by John Clifford. In this Birmingham Repertory Theatre production Kathryn Hunter plays Celestina as a middle-aged, loudmouthed, chain-smoking, crew-cut lesbian. She has promised a rich young man called Calisto that she can persuade a beautiful young woman Melibea to be seduced by him.
Set in a modern nightclub with a real onstage "Rumba Catalana" band we get into lively foot-tapping flamenco mood. Against a storyline of pimping and prostitution the language is coarse, the physicality hard-hitting and blatantly crude. Yet, by using a Scottish Variety theatre style of acting, (with performers addressing the audience directly, and coming off stage into the stalls), Bieto pushes all the humour buttons more of a farce than drama.
Hunter is a true star and carries the show single-handedly, perfectly in tune with the emotional pathos of Celestina and her situation. The rest of the cast are uniformly bland, shout rather than speak their lines and have little notion of characterisation. All in all a mish-mash of a production, a poor, often incomprehensible (radically edited) script, which left much of the audience bored. Having said that many critics gave four or five stars so they must have had a good time.
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