Review by Kate Gaul
Occasionally there is a show that is so different, so undeniable as an experience that it blows me away after 4 weeks at Edinburgh Fringe. “Comala Comala” presented by Mexico’s Pulpo Arts is this production. I confess that I didn’t always know what was going on, but I loved it. On the way into Zoo Southside’s small studio, we are offered a shot of mezcal and told to hang onto our cups as there will be a refill during the show. We are entering the world between life and death. Based on Juan Rulfo’s magical realist novel, “Comala, Comala” tells of a young man’s quest to fulfil his mother’s deathbed wish that he finds his estranged father. It was a promise made by Juan Preciado to his mother Dolores, to return to her home of Comala, a prosperous town with the fine scent of honey beyond the green fields of maize, to find and meet his father Pedro Páramo. But the Comala that she remembered and described to her son is not what he finds. Rather, a run down and almost deserted, a ghost town of memories where laments are sung like a river of tears that never ends.
The music and lyrics are by Pablo Chemor. It is sung in Mexican with translations projected on the back wall.
The Studio seats around 80 on three sides. The audience packs in, mescal in hand. The stage is also packed for eight performers and a collection of huge drum like structures. Certainly, they are made of wood with a skin stretched over the top. From inside the drums, light permeates. On top of the drums sit bottles, candles, lights, scarves. The performers will play accordion, fiddle, trumpet, mouth organ, a gong, and piano. Eerily, a giant jawbone of an ass is “played” often and even becomes a character in a story that conjoured more or less out of the ether. It has been described as séance like. Any other illumination is subtle. The story telling is immediate, intimate and we pass through the present to the future and past, and from life into death.
The cast comes together. Are they a family? Characters are allocated. A story unfolds. The actor playing Preciado is also to play his father, represented by the jawbone of an ass. The story and characters are slippery. Based on an idea by co-creators Alonso Teruel and Alejandro Bracho – in which each actor/musician takes on several characters -there is little attempt to differentiate them at times. If you are too rational, I think you would be frustrated by an event that is overwhelming as text music and characterisation drifts like a strange dream. The past, the present, the living, the dead, the tangled families and their betrayals mix with the blood and tears in the dry Mexican soil. It’s Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) meets spiritualist meeting meets drunken party.
The production begins with a primal incantation and songs punctuate the spoken story. Music sets the scene and keeps the atmosphere bristling. Brilliant, vibrant stuff and a unique opportunity to sample performing arts from Mexico.
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