It's a cliche to say that we Brits do not possess the requisite Iberian passion to convincingly stage Lorca. UK performers can be stretched to bad-acting point by plays in which nothing is expressed save in metaphors involving blood, bulls and olive groves. Undaunted, Max Key's production of Lorca's early drama Mariana Pineda goes for broke: we have Spanish guitar, sun-blasted ochre floors and, on opening night, temperatures that would make Andalucia seem a bit nippy in comparison.
The ambience is the most impressive aspect of Key's production (which launches a Lorca season at the Arcola). Designer Jon Bausor has created a two-sided stage whose adobe walls peter imperceptibly into cobwebby muslin drapes. Here we meet Mariana, a widow who has fallen in love with a republican rebel, Don Pedro. But the authorities are closing in, in the form of libidinous police chief Pedrosa. And, while her lover and cohorts flee for England, Mariana is arrested for the capital crime of stitching together a revolutionary flag.
The play, based on historical events and written as a challenge to the pre-Franco dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, foreshadows Lorca's own grisly end. Key orchestrates his large cast with elegance and atmospheric flourishes: at one point, an informant appears as just a shadow on the gauze.
But Mariana's embrace of self-sacrifice, her refusal to name her co-conspirators, is less affecting than it might be. Lorca's densely poetic script makes everyone seem pompous, and all those oppressive omens ("even the rivers that run so freely feel like chains") stifle the drama. Mariana's acceptance of death, which she keeps reminding everyone is noble and principled, seems more a function of lovesickness and self-righteousness.
At the end, there's a stage full of nuns telling us how wonderful she is. But, though this revival is in some ways persuasive, it never convinced me of that.
· Until August 19. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
