Sydney Reviews

A love letter to Lorca, with a whiff of William Styron, Andrew Bovell’s Song of First Desire begins with a faltering recitation of the slain poet’s Dittty of First Desire by a woman in her underwear, dazed, confused, perhaps suffering from dementia, either caused by the ravages of age, or having lived through an age of uncivil matters, the horror, the horrors of disappeared sons and spouses, the defilement of daughters, the confiscation of children.

The woman’s name is Camelia and she is lost between the past and the present as she passes her days in the garden of her Madrid home. Her children, non identical twins, Julia and Carlos, employ Alejandro, a Colombian migrant, to care for her. He seems to have a calming effect on Camelia, but causes a combustible competition between the siblings. Both have their eyes on him as sexual conquest.

The surface tensions are tremendous, but it is what lies beneath, buried in recent history and perhaps in the dirt of the garden itself that gives the play an added layer.

The consequences and fallout of Franco’s forty year Fascist regime in Spain permeate the play, a period that threw a murderous spanner in the works of liberty and democracy, creating schism within society and triggering major emigration. 

A history lesson, sure, complete with histrionics, but certain lines resonate in today’s turbulent geo-political climate, talk of territories secretly admiring the so called “strong men”, the dictators and authoritarians who loom as large today as ever. Bovell urges us to not cower under power, to cower is cowardice and can only lead to capitulation.

Neil Armfield returns to Belvoir to direct an excellent ensemble of four performers who play two characters each, one from the present and one from the past, those from Then informing the those of Now.

Kerry Fox is sultry, sullen, vivacious and provocative as Julia while conversely, considerably conservative and uptight as the line towing Nationalist,  Carmen. Borja Maestre is compelling as the Columbian Alejandro and his tortured ancestor, Juan.

Jorge Muriel gives deliciously demarcation between the flamboyant Carlos and the vile Franco flunky, Luis. Sarah Peirse is simply spectacular as both the ethereal, occasionally almost comatose Camelia, and the pragmatically down to earth Margarita.

Set and costume design by Mel Page is dominated by a floor of rich loam for the actors to roam, a garden fertilised by blood and bone, superbly lit by Morgan Moroney.

Torrid and florid just like Lorca, the play ends as it began with a recitation of Lorca’s poem, no longer tentative but emboldened.

In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
a heart.

And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.

(Soul,
turn oranged coloured.
Soul, turn the colour of love.)

In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.

And at the evenings end
I wanted to be my voice
A nightingale.

Soul,
turn orange coloured.
Soul,
turn the colour of love.