Comala, Comala
It was a promise made by Juan Preciado to his mother Dolores, to return to her home of Comala, a prosperous town with a floral whiff 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 upon his arrival, run down and almost deserted, a ghost town of memories where laments are sung like a river of tears that never ends.
Taken in by Eduviges Dyada, a friend of his mother who also knew his father all too well, Juan finds himself buried in the dark earth in the company of the dead, Dorotea whose suicide could not be forgiven by Father Rentería but who is now eager to tell the stories of the past and the legacy of Pedro Páramo and the tragedy of those he touched, herself included, while Páramo whom she had hoped would go to hell was absolved of sin and so spared damnation.
Adapted from Juan Rulfo’s 1955 novel Pedro Páramo by playwright Conchi León with music and lyrics by Pablo Chemor, sung in Mexican but with translations projected on the back wall, Comala, Comala is performed by an eight-strong cast rotating through a larger number of characters, the mesmerising experience at times bordering on overwhelming, so much there is to keep track of between the past, the present, the living, the dead, the tangled families and their betrayals mixing with the blood and tears in the dry soil.
The small space filled with illuminated tables filled with bottles and candles and the myriad of instruments played by the cast, the audience surrounding the performance space on three sides, Comala, Comala is both intimate and immediate, like Día de los Muertos from which it rises a remembrance and celebration of what has been, a merging of two worlds in a sacred space blessed with the spirit provided upon arrival, mezcal, as the lost souls search for a way out of their purgatory and seek a forgiveness they can never find.
Comala, Comala continues at Zoo Southside until Sunday 25th August
