12:05 AM 11/8/2012
Beijo no asfalto
Being a review of the play attended in London this evening,
At the New Diorama Theatre, Euston Road, entitled The
Asphalt
Kiss.
The slightly fusty start to this entry is due to being
reminded
that the works of Nelson Rodrigues, famous controversial
playwright
of Brazil that he is, are from the last century. Indeed this
production
by a mix of Brazilian and English actors from the Stonecrabs
Theatre
Company, is to mark the centenary of his birth in Recife.
Like his other
famous plays such as All nudity should be punished, The
Asphalt Kiss (1960)
is Carioca set, and the mix of faces in the cast is characteristic of a pugnacious and shocking family set scenario intended to shock. But shock who and why?
is Carioca set, and the mix of faces in the cast is characteristic of a pugnacious and shocking family set scenario intended to shock. But shock who and why?
Great playwrights are feted for the durability of their works as proved by repetition of performance in infinite variety. But at what
level does a nearly full 80 strong theatre in very close contact with the
actors understand this Brazilian contextual tor de force? A large number of
gay men in the audience indicated a sympathy for the obsentible theme - a
man who compassionately kisses a dying man who requests the succor in his final
moments is destroyed and betrayed by journalists, the police, his family and wife,
and finally murdered by his father-in -law wishing to make a point, but ultimately committing
the same act of kissing another man. But Rodrigues
who has been much maligned in recent years over his depiction of sexual morality and portrayal of women, is more
of an old school playwright.
For a self educated
journalist, not one with a European education, when Brazil had no universities of its own, who had to push his way into
favour, it is easy to understand the appeal of the old Greek tragedies and ways of telling
stories that hinge on intersecting and often incestous family lies. But a certain element of
catholic sensitivity in terms of punishment and betrayal is also visible. More seriously
in the Brazilian context when these plays were written and often banned, are issues
of censorship, where the human context is allegorical to the political situation - an
object lesson in what is not said or spelled out but which is just as shocking a metanarrative as
the apparent media sensation over the supposedly homosexual and criminal act of kindness
which the doomed protagonist has opened up.As a journalist then, Rodrigues lesson for the audience is
concerned with teaching how openingup a story is also an exercise in telling lies.
This play
dates from 1960, a period of a fragile new democracy, fraught with a wide range of new political activities, where women are economically
active , and cultural influences from
Europe and America were digesting the issues of power and propoganda, death and destruction and the
Brazilian State become a pawn in the politics of the Cold War. At issue is the future of Brazil, most
intense is the politics of poverty and wealth.
In this metanarrative the
protagonist is more of a kind hearted everyman, a man of love and compassion, but who
turns out to be `modern` in his attitudes to birth control, being persuaded to pawn his
wedding ring for an abortion, according to his wife.
But the sensationalist hi-jacking of the truth of the
`Asphalt Kiss` story, results in a questioning of him, his motives, and his
lifestyle by all around him for their own purposes. It is the suspicion, the
disbelief, the questioning that is the real purpose of the story. Rodrigues is considering the fate of those who try to make
things more equal in life, indeed in death. The ultimate humanity of aiding others to
be human also. And how that humanity is distorted and labelled and condemned by
so many Judas turncoats along the way, that innocence cannot exist at all.
Other kisses in the play then, are different signifiers in this reading. In his depiction of the pressures of conformity, the use of
a police chief in collusion with the press to bully and oppress, Rodrigues was
repeating what he know from personal experience about dictatorships, the previous regime (the Novo Estado) and instinctively perhaps pointing to the future of 1964 (the Didatura). He points to a whole cultrual idiom where apparant moral freedom covers commentary about lack of political freedom.
To this production then. I do not think the audience
understood the historical significance of the play, in the way that perhaps
they would now approach Ibsen`s feminist plays as historical indicators of past
attitudes to women. A slight puzzlement overhung the crowd. I was interested
that there was no note of the English translator of the Portuguese original,
which has far more `earthy` language. The settings were simplistic in the
extreme, while the players followed the Brazilian tradition of overexaggerated
characterisation, aided by the well laid out movement across stage which with
colouful fifties dresses and suits, gave an almost cartoon appearance which
certainly aids the allegory intention. Excellent acting of the confusions of
the wife Selminha (played by with visible
movement by Gael Le Cornac) and the strikingly contemporary looking Brazilian Diego
Sales as the protagonist Arandir gave a more emotive and human side to the
story, so the dramatic convention of drawing the audience into the tragedy was achieved
and suspended critical thinking at appropriate moments. Ronaldo Borges in his
UK debut was marvellous in depicting the police chief Cunha as a master of
deceptive bullying power.
The collusion of the media in concentrating on sexual tittle
tattle rather than examining what is really going on in a State (something
given dramatic realism in the current Leverson enquiry here in the UK), with the characterisation of
Amado Ribeiro came across with a intensity which collapsed into more of a
manipulative bystander, in part as the British actress Karlina Grace had
problems with a falling hem on her costume. It is also perhaps a weaker element
of the original play which seeks to depict the ability of the press to forget
its own lies and subterfuges in the daily plethora of words.
It is an effort to find this theatre in the unlovely office
blocks of the northern side of the Euston Road, but I can assure you it is well
worthwhile to see a play which has ultimate stamina as a great work of art, and
of which the Brazilian actors can be justly proud of bringing to the attention
of Londoners in such a shoestring but arresting production.
Remaining dates from Today, Thursday 8th November
through to Saturday 10th November.
15-16 Triton Street, Regents Place London NW1
3BF,
0844 209 0344
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