When Five Years Pass
This peculiar play cannot be better summed up than by the synopsis handed out: ‘One must not wait, one must live.’
A young man waits five years to marry the woman he loves. Encouraged by his mentor and mocked by a friend, he is pursued by his typist who loves him but still tries to leave. A dead boy and cat appear out of the storm. And a mother laments the death of her son.
The silent rugby player, smoking his cigarettes, spirits his bride away. The young man eventually learns to look to his typist for love and his child. Ironically, she turns the tables on him and it is he that is forced to wait for her. Confused, he retreats under the attack of threatening strangers who replace his friends.
Bizarre! ‘When Five Years Pass’ is Lorca’s most surrealist play, fulfiling the author’s project to create a new theatre, innovative in both style and content. Despite some touches of humour, the play is a tragedy with its recurring theme of death, torment, unshared love and missed opportunities.
It is presented in a new translation by Pilar Orti, an IC graduate, deeply involved in Dramsoc, who went straight on to drama school. Pilar has stuck as faithfully as possible to the original text.
The Forbidden Theatre Company is committed to featuring new, original and distinct work, shaking British acting, which, according to the director Phillip Hoffman, ‘lacks passion’, and ‘reaffirming the intensity of the theatrical moment’. This has indeed been masterfully achieved, with powerful acting, a lot of vigour and strong drive. The actors at times seem transported by Lorca’s poetry and admirable language.
However, the strangeness of the play might not be to everyone’s taste. Despite the quality of the acting, it is not easy to follow. The play is at times disturbing and confusing and one does not always know what to make of it. Danut
