19
Bridegroom who will be married and will have children and land and somehow  
redeem the dead men of the past. Instead of walking towards a family wedding, he 
is walking under a family curse. Thus‚ Lorca’s tragedy begins not with the  
elopement‚ but with the inheritance, placing Blood Wedding in the prosaic realities 
of property‚ marriage‚ family reputation‚ masculine honour‚ and rural community.  
At another level‚ Lorca’s symbolism breathes the unknown into the scenery: 
knives‚ blood‚ horses‚ moonlight and earth seem to lead the characters to  
catastrophe. The risk is that social violence begins to look like natural law‚ and 
beauty seduces us into accepting brutality as inevitable. On the other hand, Carr 
and Farber’s adaptation pushes on what that explanation was. Transposing the 
play to rural Ireland changes the explanation as much as it changes the setting. As 
mentioned, this production re-contextualises Blood Wedding to a fictional  
“Andalusia‚ County Offaly”: meaning “Andalusia‚ County Offaly” is itself  
wonderfully unstable: not quite Spain‚ not quite Ireland‚ but a theatrical landscape 
in which the two places haunt one another (Carr‚ 2019). Setting also matters: rural 
Ireland brings with it its own history of things such as land‚ inheritance‚  
Catholicism‚ family loyalty and communal grievance. Blood still matters according 
to Carr‚ but it is not only poetic. It is social‚ economic and historical. This makes 
the Mother sound different. In Lorca‚ she can become a type‚ an archetype of grief 
and hatred hardened into tragic law.  
However, the adaptation isn’t a straightforward improvement. Carr and Farber  
replace Lorca’s symbolically fatalistic conception of violence with a political  
model; this gain is also a loss. Lorca’s Blood Wedding is not powerful simply  
because it gives us a story about desire and death. This is clearest in the final act‚ 
where Lorca’s play has unfolded in recognisable social situations such as family 
conversations or marriage negotiations. But as the Bride and Leonardo flee into the 
forest‚ the play changes register: no longer a place‚ the forest is now an entrance. 
The Moon appears. Death appears also‚ as a Beggar Woman. The woodcutters 
speak with choric awareness, ordinary realism no longer suffices. The scene is set 
in a symbolic natural landscape in which nature itself seems to collaborate with 
violence (Lorca‚ 1933:9-83). Rupert C. Allen’s work on Lorca is helpful here. For 
Allen‚ the symbols of Lorca‚ death‚ the moon‚ blood‚ and the forest‚ are not merely 
secondary themes‚ but critical elements of the psychic and theatrical makeup of 
the plays. As he explains, these symbols are not simply “themes” to be decoded 
and then put away. They are theatrical forces. They create an atmosphere in which 
the characters seem trapped in some kind of social cage and exposed metaphys-
ically (Allen‚ 1974: 5).  And so, the forest scene: in Lorca‚ the Moon has asked for 
light in order to find her lost lovers. Death waits‚ and the woodcutters know more 
than ordinary characters should know. And the scene is doubly disturbing‚ since it 
defamiliarises hunting as a human activity‚ presenting not just the men who  
pursue Leonardo‚ but the play itself‚ as preparing to shed blood. This is where‚ for 
me‚ Lorca’s tragedy is at its most beautiful and most haunting; although we know 

View this content as a flipbook by clicking here.