Divinas palabras (1918-1920), Ramón María del Valle-Inclán

Productions in Spanish

Divinas palabras

Details

Dates: 24 March 1933
Venue: Teatro Español
Location: Madrid, Spain

Critical response

The way in which Valle-Inclán managed to inject feeling and meaning into every part he played was commended by those present (Valle-Inclán 1991: 53).

Valle-Inclán, Ramón María del. 1991. Divinas palabras: tragicomedia de aldea, ed. Luis Iglesias Feijoo. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (in Spanish)

Further information

This was a reading of the play given by Valle-Inclán.

Divinas palabras (Cipriano Rivas Cherif)

Details

Director: Cipriano Rivas Cherif
Dates: 16 November 1933
Venue: Teatro Español
Location: Madrid, Spain

Critical response

Maria Delgado points out that this production proved problematic and distasteful for some right-wing conservative critics. In contrast, as Delgado goes on to point out, others were praiseworthy of the production and Margarita Xirgu’s interpretation of Mari-Gaila in particular, which some critics contrasted with Enrique Borràs’s performance as her husband Pedro Gailo: ‘Borràs/Pedro Gailo was associated with outdated rituals and decay […] while Xirgu/Mari-Gaila was equated with vitality and reinvention’ (2003: 38).

Delgado, Maria M. 2003. ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth-Century Spanish Stage. New York; Manchester, Palgrave; Manchester University Press

Divinas palabras (José Tamayo)

Details: Director: José Tamayo
Dates: November 1961
Venue: Teatro Bellas Artes
Location: Madrid, Spain
Further information: This was the first major production of a Valle-Inclán play to be staged during Franco’s regime in Spain.

Divinas palabras (Juan Ibáñez)

Details: Director: Juan Ibáñez
Dates: 1964
Venue: Teatro El Caballito
Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Further information: This production also went to the International Festival of Theatre in Nancy, France, in 1964

Divinas palabras (Jorge Lavelli)

Details

Director: Jorge Lavelli
Dates: 1964
Venue: Teatro Coliseo
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Critical response

The well-known Spanish actress María Casares (1922-96) performed the role of Mari-Gaila. The Argentine press praised her performance as being full of ‘playful vivacity and insolent wit’ (Delgado 2003: 114). Maria Delgado mentions the fact that Casares’ Galician accent stood out amongst the rest of the cast’s Argentine accents, reflective of Mari-Gaila’s status as the outsider (2003: 114).

Delgado, Maria M. 2003. ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth-Century Spanish Stage. New York; Manchester, Palgrave; Manchester University Press

Divinas palabras (Víctor García)

Details

Director: Víctor García
Production company: Nuria Espert Theatre Company
Dates: October 1975
Venue: Teatro Auditorium
Location: Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Critical response

As Maria Delgado notes, this production was not particularly well received, as opposed to international productions of the play. She points out that several critics at the time suggested various reasons why the production failed, including a lack of familiarity with Valle-Inclán's work among Spanish audiences, as well as the fact that the production had boldly re-imagined and changed parts of the text, much to the displeasure of some reviewers (2003: 153). In line with this last idea, Delgado concludes:

If Divinas palabras failed to convince, it may have been precisely because its reinvention and revision within the larger context of the country's uneasy transition from dictatorship to democracy defied established bounds of directorial practice, dispensing with such woolly concepts as 'fidelity', 'authorial intentions' and 'authenticity' in favour of a re-imagining of the text in ways that the press corps clearly found unsettling. (2003: 153-4)

Delgado, Maria M. 2003. ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth-Century Spanish Stage. New York; Manchester, Palgrave; Manchester University Press

Further information

The actress Nuria Espert (who played Mari-Gaila) also worked as Víctor García’s directorial assistant in this production, which was elaborately staged. Maria Delgado describes the stage that García produced, in collaboration with Enrique Alarcón:

Dispensing with any attempt to fix the action to a particular local milieu, García and Alarcón invented a mobile set consisting of portable trucks each filled with organ pipes of different lengths and jutting trumpets, and a twenty-metre battered harmonium on which Laureano was dragged along. These trucks could be easily pushed into different shapes and configurations to suggest the multiple settings of Valle-Inclán’s play. An aggressive physical performance style by the cast of fourteen, at times almost sensually balletic, complementing the baroque connotations of the organ pipes, served to delineate the rapacious avarice of the community. (2003: 152)

Delgado also notes that there were a number of changes in this production, for example Pedro Gailo did not throw himself from the church roof and the Goat-goblin was replaced by two men sitting astride an organ-pipe (2003: 152).

Delgado, Maria M. 2003. ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth-Century Spanish Stage. New York; Manchester, Palgrave; Manchester University Press

Divinas palabras (Víctor García)

Details

Director: Víctor García
Dates: 1976
Venue: Teatre Grec
Location: Barcelona, Spain

Critical response

This production was more popular with the public than the 1975 production had been. Once again, Nuria Espert played Mari-Gaila. The public image of this actress in 1976 was of an attractive hippyish young woman, with wild hair and tight tops (Delgado 2003: 154). Maria Delgado points out that the 'pleasure in [Espert's] eroticism and sexuality in Divinas palabras may have shocked the critics, but it provided a refreshing image of female imancipation for a younger generation of audiences' (2003: 154). In fact, Deglado notes that critics at the time of the production recorded accounts of 'stampeding audiences, long queues and an atmosphere of frenzied excitement which seems to be more suggestive of the dynamics of a pop concert than a theatrical event' (2003: 154-5).

Delgado, Maria M. 2003. ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth-Century Spanish Stage. New York; Manchester, Palgrave; Manchester University Press

Divinas palabras (César Oliva)

Details: Director: César Oliva
Dates: 1983
Venue: Teatro Estable Julián Romea
Location: Murcia, Spain

Divinas palabras (José Tamayo)

Details

Director: José Tamayo
Dates: April 1986
Venue: Teatro Bellas Artes
Location: Madrid, Spain

Critical response

Marion Peter Holt notes that this production ‘proved immensely successful with the public’ but that, in his opinion, it fell short of being a ‘definitive treatment’ of the play (1986: 84). The roles of Mari-Gaila and Pedro Gaila were performed by extremely well-known actors (Nati Mistral and Juanjo Menéndez, respectively). Nevertheless, Holt notes that their fame did not overshadow the impact of the characters they were playing (1986: 84).

Holt, Marion Peter. 1986. ‘Review: Divinas palabras; El concierto de San Ovidio’, Performing Arts Journal, 10.2, 84-7

Divinas palabras (Juan Ibáñez)

Details: Director: Juan Ibáñez
Dates: 1988
Venue: Teatro Principal
Location: Guanajuato, Mexico

Divinas palabras (Ricardo Iniesta)

Details: Director: Ricardo Iniesta
Production company: Atalaya Theatre Company
Dates: from 10 March 1998 to 28 March 1998
Venue: Teatre Joventut
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Critical response: This production won the National Ercilla Prize.

Divinas palabras (Gerardo Vera)

Details: Director: Gerardo Vera
Dates: from 21 September 2006 to 28 October 2006
Venue: Teatro Valle-Inclán
Location: Madrid, Spain
Further information: This version was adapted by Juan Mayorga.

Divinas palabras (Gerardo Vera)

Details

Director: Gerardo Vera
Dates: July 2007
Venue: Rose Theater
Location: New York, United States

Critical response

The columnist for The New York Times found the play shocking, noting that it is ‘not for the squeamish’ (2007).

Hampton, Wilborn. 2007. ‘Unrelenting Bleakness and Outrage, with no Mitigating Circumstances’. Review of Divinas palabras at the Rose Theater, New York, The New York Times, 28 July, http://theater.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/theater/reviews/28divi.html [accessed June 2010] (Online Publication)

Further information

The production was performed in Spanish with English supertitles.

Productions in English

Divine Words (Mark Ravenhill)

Details: Director: Mark Ravenhill
Based on translation: Divine Words (1997) by Maria Delgado
Dates: 9 January 1990
Venue: Soho Poly Theatre
Location: London, United Kingdom
Further information: This was a reading of the play, with eight cast members performing all of the roles.

Divine Words (Andy Farrell)

Details: Director: Andy Farrell
Based on translation: Divine Words (1997) by Maria Delgado
Dates: from 24 March 2004 to 27 April 2004
Venue: Capitol Theatre, Manchester University
Location: Manchester, United Kingdom

Divine Words (Felipe Vergara)

Details

Director: Felipe Vergara
Based on translation:
Dates: from 9 February 2010 to 21 February 2010
Venue: Tomlinson Theater, Temple University
Location: Temple, United States

Further information

Robert Smythe, who adapted the play for this performance, is the founder of Mum Puppettheatre which uses puppets heavily in its shows. In this production of Divine Words puppets were used for some of the characters, such as the dwarf.

The performance relocated the play to the Appalachian Mountains during the Depression.

Entry written by Gwynneth Dowling. Last updated on 6 October 2010.