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'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).
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