Women’s stories told in groundbreaking melting pot of music, drama, history and dance

Newbury Spring Festival: The Telling – Into the Melting Pot at the Corn Exchange, Newbury

on Wednesday, May 22

Review by JULIA ROWNTREE

THE very nature of this performance was itself ‘a melting pot’ of music, drama, history, dance and movement and lighting.

Set in 1492, it is the story of Blanca, a Jewess, who is being forced to leave her home because of the edict of Ferdinand and Isabella’s that Jews must convert to Catholicism or leave.

Simply staged, centre Blanca’s spindle, right (to the viewer) three musicians and, left, a few seating props. Three actors/ singers moved around the sparse set. Clothing was dark with the odd splash of red (blood?).

The lighting was dynamic and well focused, adding greatly to the intensity of the performance.

The symbolic spinning of time, the sheer simple beauty of the Sephardic traditional songs, Alfonso’s Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Andalusian/ Arabic traditional songs with skilled and sensitive instrumental accompaniment of recorders, oud, harp and percussion, were all in the melting pot of performance making this a highly emotionally charged drama of persecution and man’s ability to hurt and destroy.

Blanca tells her life-story of how her neighbours of Jews, Muslims and Christians lived culturally side by side on the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages. This was her home. But now, under Ferdinand and Isabella, she must leave. She is a Jew – she cannot become a Catholic.

The play ends with her walking off the stage towards the foyer, the unknown, with a small bag of a few belongings. In the foyer the performance caused tears of emotion, deep discussions and sheer disbelief that the world has not changed. Blanca longed for the time ‘when all the world is tuned to one note’.

The excellent programme notes end with ‘and today in the UK, like Blanca, we try to convince ourselves “It can’t happen – won’t happen – not here”.

Can we really be that sure?’