El AMOR DE DON PERLIMPLÍN CON BELISA EN SU JARDÍN (2023)

Written between 1922 and 1926 and premiered in 1933, Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su Jardín is a masterpiece of farce that ends in tragedy, mixing lyrical and grotesque moments onstage. In the play, Don Perlimplín is an elderly man who, proud of having remained a bachelor all his life, is convinced by his servant Marcolfa to marry his neighbour Belisa, a tender teenager offered unashamedly and almost by force by her mother. But tragedy explodes on the wedding night when, despite Perliplín’s confession of his love for Belisa, she falls for another man with whom she is having a passionate romance. Aware of the deception, Perlimplín will have to decide how to respond to this treachery.

It’s rare for gimmicks to pay off in theatre, rarer still that a master’s writing can be so radically interpreted and remain fully formed, but different, but that’s my takeaway from this gorgeous production. It’s a play that brings laughs that soon crack and dry in your throat, a charming realism in the characters within a surreal dreamscape of a setting and a reminder that we contain many versions of ourselves, some of which we only find when pitched into the trauma of love. A bolt from the blue that can come at any time, and for which we are never prepared.
– ★★★★★ Gary Naylor for Broadwayworld.com