The current staging of Lope de Vega's "The Best Judge, the King" at GALA Hispanic Theatre is at once modern and anachronistic. High-top wearing peasants dance with Spanish royalty in elaborate 17th-century costuming; straightforward staging competes with poetic and elevated dialogue; a classically written play comes to life with sparse scenery. This use of contrast creates a fictional world where the themes of justice and conscience play out with jarring disregard for historical context.
One of de Vega's lesser-known works, "The Best Judge, the King" tells the story of Sancho and Elvira, two madly-in-love Galician peasants who must ask their lord Don Tello permission for their marriage. The lord falls rapturously and greedily in love with Elvira when he sees her beauty for the first time, prompting him to cancel the wedding and abduct and rape her. Helpless, Sancho begs the King to rightfully return his lover and restore justice.
De Vega is a Spanish language Shakespeare who writes with an intricate and ornate command of language. Performed in Spanish with electronic English subtitles, seeing such beautiful language juxtaposed next to the staging is a rich visual and linguistic experience. The play itself unfolds with the same linear sense of plot and building of drama as the Bard's - the action is simple and straightforward. There is even a fool character responsible for quietly wise utterances and who speaks the powerful epigraph at the play's end. Unlike Shakespeare, however, de Vega's work builds up and sentimentalizes the common man. Sancho is neither Hamlet nor King Lear: he is a peasant who must seek higher authority to solve his life's tragedy and whose steadfast courage the King ultimately rewards.
Piecing together different historical elements, the staging renders the play's modern relevance and cultural roots simultaneously important. Costuming especially bridges generations and makes pointed contrast between the classes. The peasants sport jeans and sneakers, while the wealthier class wears historical costumes. Whereas the choice to stage Shakespearean plays in contemporary eras often makes a forced and over-dramatic relevance, this costuming in "The Best Judge" is more thought-provoking than thought-making. It is not a straightforward choice, and it adds an unassuming complexity to the play's direction.
Even further, the setting of "The Best Judge," is sparse and modern. The stage is almost bare, save for a single, detached spiral staircase and a wooden ladder from the top of which the King addresses Sancho. Ornate glass windows covered with gauzy red curtains beckon from the back of the stage, hinting at a world of wealth distant from the lives of the play's poor main characters.
De Vega's play is a love story, but it is also a dark commentary on power and greed. The simple scenery allows both of the play's forces to wrestle vividly with each other on stage.
In one particularly powerful scene, the captured Elvira struggles to reach her father's hand from the top of the spiral staircase. The scene evokes a classic fairy tale: Elvira is a wounded princess helplessly awaiting rescue atop her tower.
However, the sparseness of the stage allows the darker underpinnings to craft the scene's heartbreaking tension. The staircase both elevates Elvira and entraps her - she is at once an honorable princess and a helpless peasant woman held prey by a lascivious and greedy lord.
With superb acting and compelling directorial choices, "The Best Judge, the King" is an intellectual and beautiful play. It is one of those rewarding productions whose themes and questions you will wrestle with for days
You can reach this staff writer at agoldstein@theeeagleonline.com.
