Borja Maestre tries to make sense of the past in Song of First Desire. Photo: Brett Boardman
As director Neil Armfield notes in the program, to write and stage a play about the ‘inheritance of fascism in Spain might seem a massive reach’. And indeed, for those who know little or nothing of the Spanish Civil War, the Franco era and El Pacto de Olvido (the Pact of Forgetting, the political decision taken by both leftist and rightist parties of Spain to avoid confronting and prosecuting villains of Franco’s murderous government, during which thousands of opponents to his regime were imprisoned without trial or summarily shot), Andrew Bovell’s new work Song of First Desire may well be a massive reach.
Bovell tells us that the idea to write the play stems from his love of the city of Madrid and of conversations with many Madrileños whom he encouraged to speak of the past via their grandparents’ memories. He is not the first. In the past few years, films have emerged, such as Parallel Mothers and El maestro que prometió el mar (The Teacher Who Promised the Sea), which have exposed the horrors of the Civil War and the fascist regime (both excellent films, in my opinion). In his play, Bovell gives us Alejandro, a young Colombian with Spanish grandparents (played with brio by Borja Maestre), to expose the secrets in his family and with it the violence of the past, and the silence that followed.
Alejandro comes to Spain and into the unhappy home of Camelia (Sarah Peirse) and adult twins Julia and Luis (Kerry Fox and Jorge Muriel) to act as a carer for Camelia, who has dementia. So far, so good. The twins, who are not very adult at all, are constantly at war, bickering and physically fighting (this we can take as a metaphor for the ‘two Spains’ in existence today). Camelia drifts through it all, refusing to talk. Alejandro shows much compassion towards her and, as the action progresses, we wonder if, as well as getting through to Camelia, perhaps he will allow himself to be seduced by Luis and/or Julia. But that is not Alejandro’s mission.
Meanwhile, the plot shifts between the present and past (helpfully signalled on the back of the set) as the four actors assume different roles. In the ‘past’, Fox becomes Carmen, the wife of one of Franco’s henchmen Carlos (Muriel); Peirse becomes Margarita, who is desperate to send her son Juan (Maestre) out of fascist Spain and out of danger.
The plot unfolds pretty slowly.
There are some excellent scenes – Peirse, always a joy to watch, engrosses us totally when she eventually relives the moment when she was forced to abandon a child; and we’re definitely with Maestre as the about-to-be exiled Juan. Other moments (not too much of a spoiler here), like the adult twins brawling on the ground on Mel Page’s dirt covered set in the early moments of the play, and, much later, a quick and melodramatic stabbing, less so. And why Bovell has given Alejandro such a horrible and guilty secret to divulge is not obvious at all, except perhaps to try to connect it all to 2025 audiences.
Maximum concentration is required at time to work out who is who (yes, there are costume changes and the aforementioned Then/Now signals, but there are three generations at play here and I was not the only member of the audience to find it confusing at times.) Talking of costume, it seemed a shame that one of Peirse’s characters had to go through nearly the entire play with only the most appalling underwear; as well as losing her mental acuity, poor old Camelia doesn’t even merit a shabby old nightie. (Although she does get one in the production shots I was sent; perhaps there was a wardrobe malfunction on the night.)
That said, the four actors give us eight intriguing characters and plenty to think and wonder about (even if some of that thinking and wondering might be better done as research before seeing the play). It runs one hour and 50 minutes, without an interval. It is bookended by Peirse’s Camelia reciting a poem, which begins: ‘In the green morning, I wanted to be a heart.’ Both renditions are full of sadness and yearning. The initiated may know this is a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca (I didn’t, I had to Google it; although I did know that Lorca was murdered in 1936, another victim of Nationalist forces). Called Ditty of First Desire in the English translation, it explains how Bovell named his play.
Until 23 March 2025
Tickets: $41-$97
https://belvoir.com.au/productions/song-of-first-desire/or (02) 9699 3444
