Nadia Fall begins her tenure as artistic director of Theatre Royal Stratford East with April De Angelis’s updated version of a 17th-century Spanish classic, Fuenteovejuna. It’s a significant choice, since Joan Littlewood directed Lope de Vega’s play at this same theatre in 1955, as well as in Manchester in 1936, and even if there are moments when the new production’s modern setting is at odds with the original story, it is an impressive, blood-stirring evening.
The action has been shifted from Spain to a rural India under the spell of the rightwing ruling BJP. Gangwar, a politicised policeman, sees “cleansing Hindustan of the Muslim pest” as part of his mission. He is also steeped in corruption and a serial rapist. He meets resistance, however, from 16-year-old Jyoti, who is in love with a Muslim boy and who incites the women of her village to avenge themselves on the tyrannical cop.
In the process, some of the original’s complexity is lost: where De Vega’s play combines collective action with a belief in monarchical authority, this version implausibly suggests a progressive Hindu politician would have the power to offer pardon. However, De Angelis’s version, with its references to fake news, spin-doctors and Bollywood movies and its endorsement of women’s power to fight against male brutality, is undeniably in tune with the times.
It is Fall’s production, however, that really makes the evening work. Polly Bennett, as movement director, turns the scene in which the women attack Gangwar like bacchantes into a riot of flailing bodies glimpsed through a swirl of red dust. Anya Chalotra as Jyoti moves compellingly from strong-willed adolescent to fiery militant, reminding women they always have a choice between resistance and submission. And Scott Karim lends her Muslim lover his own brand of surly defiance. Although this version turns the police inspector into a stereotypical sadist, Art Malik plays him with the right overweening hauteur. I prefer the Spanish original, with its stress on a whole community’s inbuilt sense of justice, but this is still an invigorating start to Stratford’s new regime.
•At Theatre Royal Stratford East, London, until 6 October.
