This two-woman version of Calderón’s Spanish classic Life Is a Dream is part of an ambitious festival called Women and War that offers a revolving repertory of 16 plays over four weeks. It helps that the play is staged in a historic house (6 Frederick’s Place) in the heart of the City of London that since 2013 has been a welcoming venue for artists across all disciplines.
In Calderón’s complex piece, the focus is usually on Segismundo, a Polish prince imprisoned since birth because of prophecies he would grow into a tyrant. But Paula Rodríguez and Sandra Arpa, as adaptors, directors and performers, switch the attention to Rosaura: a woman who, having been abandoned by her father, is later deserted by her lover, Astolfo, on whom she seeks revenge.
Inevitably this is compressed Calderón, but the two actors, performing in English with occasional touches of Spanish, put across the story with great clarity. They prove Calderón’s play is as much about free will as the illusoriness of existence and show Rosaura, who disguises herself as a man, as a proactive figure rather than a passive victim.
Given that Astolfo is shown here, in one of the modernising touches, as the preening star on an Oprah-style chatshow, you wonder why Rosaura is so keen to reclaim him. But Rodríguez and Arpa are brilliant performers who denote changes of character with deft economy and mimetically evoke everything from court balls to raging battles. While endorsing Calderón’s point about the supremacy of forgiveness, they offer a fresh, feminist perspective on a mysterious masterpiece.
• At the Theatre Room, London, until 14 July. Women and War festival continues until 31 July.
