'Ay Carmela! is an intriguing, mysterious and haunting play with a heartbreaking tone. The Ensemble company has excelled with this production'

The Stage

'Elizabeth Mansfield gives a wonderfully funny and moving performance… and has a thrilling singing voice which is used to the full in several musical numbers.  Robert Pickavance gives a tour de force performance'

British Theatre Guide

When vaudeville comedy act Carmela and Paulino are captured by Franco’s troops during the Spanish Civil War, they are forced to put on a show for the fascist army.  As they rehearse their material - music, songs, flamenco dances, and bizarre comedy sketches - their own intriguing story unfolds in a riot of black humour and ghostly passion.

Ay Carmela! was a darkly funny and poignant testimonial to the brutal futility of war, movingly revealing the failure of the living to learn from the dead.  Funny, poetic and elegant, Steve Trafford’s new translation brought Sinisterra’s wonderful text vividly to life.  Ay Carmela! was presented in 2006, the 70th anniversary year of the start of the Spanish Civil War.

This production featured Robert Pickavance (left), last seen at the Octagon Theatre in Arthur Miller's Broken Glass, and Elizabeth Mansfield (far left).