Life is a Dream: quick links
Life is a Dream, produced by Fervour and running now at Belvoir’s 25A, is an adaptation of Calderon de la Barca’s 1635 La vida es sueño.
The original is a dramatic meditation on the nature of reality, on moral philosophy and social and familial relationships, and other big chewy topics. It’s a Spanish Golden Age classic; something along the lines of A Midsummer’s Night Dream or King Lear.
Those existential concerns are carried over into this version, along with the premise: Segismundo (Ariyan Sharma) is a young man who has spent his life imprisoned in his bedroom, oblivious to the fact that he is the prince of Poland.
Life is a Dream: heavy remix
But adaptors Claudia Osborne and Solomon Thomas have given this Plato’s Cave allegory a heavy remix, throwing the irreality of contemporary existence into the mix.
Here, Segismundo is somewhat complicit in, or at least begrudgingly accepting of, his imprisonment. Under the belief that he’s too dangerous to be let outside, Segismundo half-heartedly participates in the life of a hikikimori stuck in arrested development and a perpetual lockdown.
That means much pottering and bed-rotting, video clips on repeat, and amusing himself with an only child’s games of invention. Sharma inhabits his role, a child trapped in a man’s body trapped in a child’s bedroom, with an incredible physicality; it’s like watching Mr. Bean star in a Saw film.
Life is a Dream: second act
The second act transitions into a familial drama; a surreal shift aided by the on-stage singing of the Saint-Saens aria Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix, from the opera Samson and Delilah. Suddenly, the scope of the play is expanded, but only to the intimate bounds of a family focused on internal division.
They may be Polish royalty, squabbling over inheritance and succession, but the domesticity of their love and devotion and betrayal are both timeless and recognisable.
Confinement-core and intertextuality loom large over this play – there are shades of Oldboy (2003) and Room (2015) and Misery (1990); of Tracy Emin’s My Bed (1998) and the Lennon/Ono love-in; of that episode of The Simpsons where Bart’s evil twin is locked in the attic.
Which is to say that it’s a play about the ambiguity of confinement, of the relationship between oppression and protection and love, and about the difficulty of seeing through the illusion and confronting reality.
Heady stuff, but Osborne and Thomas have drawn out the levity, assisted by a very strong cast. A handful of minor clunky bits have made their way into this adaptation – more than once, a shouty line could probably have been delivered differently – but the production is smooth and the actors keep the momentum flowing.
Life is a Dream: performances
Shariyan as Segismundo is handy in a role that requires a lot of silence and physical expression, and is understated in both emotionally-charged and comic moments. Thomas Campbell as Clotaldo, Segismundo’s warden and guardian, convincingly alternates from sinister to vulnerable to sweetly pastoral and back again.
Shiv Paleekar as Astolfo and Ariadne Sgouros as Estrella bring a light touch, Sgouros in particular finding comic readings for her lines. Estrella is a melodramatic in-law, a difficult character to balance, but Sgouros brings exactly the right amount of ham to the picnic.
Rosaura is not a particularly rangey role, but Essie Randles does as much as she can with what she’s given. Mark Lee commands with plenty of stage presence as the overbearing patriarch Basilio, deploying some exceptional gurning.
Set design and costuming, both by Cris Baldwin, are unobtrusive and perfect; contrasts and matches between characters’ outfits, and scenery, subtly illustrate their complex relationships.
La vida es sueño is rarely staged in English, and while this version is far from a faithful adaptation, it retains the core questions of the work, while making it accessible, engaging, and relevant to a contemporary audience.
