Song of First Desire by Andrew Bovell. Belvoir Theatre, Sydney, February 13 – March 23, 2025.
Original production 2023 by Octubre Productions, Spain.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 22
Writer: Andrew Bovell; Director: Neil Armfield
Set and Costume Designer: Mel Page; Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney
Composer/Sound Designer: Clemence Williams
Associate Sound Designer: Madeleine Picard
Movement and Intimacy Director: Nigel Poulton
Voice Coach: Laura Farrell
Stage Manager: Luke McGettigan; Asst Stage Manager: Jen Jackson
“Set in 1968 and the present, it unpicks the instincts that drive individuals and whole societies towards fear and violence – and perhaps, also, reconciliation.” Belvoir Artistic Director, Eamon Flack.
Cast:
Julia / Carmen – Kerry Fox
Alejandro / Juan – Borja Maestre
Carlos / Luis – Jorge Muriel
Camelia / Margarita – Sarah Peirse
Reviewing theatre is a personal response. My truth, as young people today often would say, may be different from another audience member’s. But that should not be taken as being against each other, though I find myself not entirely agreeing with the apparent statements of fact in the promotion material online like ‘powerful', ‘epic’, ‘utterly enthralling’.
Song of First Desire is an important story, as Eamon Flack notes. But, I well remember my excitement in the theatre when I saw Andrew Bovell’s When the rain stops falling. I wrote then: “The experience watching is exactly as happens while reconstructing a complex 1000 piece puzzle. Aha! realisations light up completely unexpectedly when it becomes clear that this or that piece just has to go here or there. Yet it is not until the very last piece is in place that we feel the tension that we might not have everything correctly understood, fall away. Only as the last clue is revealed, just as the rain stops falling, do we suddenly feel we can breathe again with satisfaction that all is now positively complete.”
I think this story of why Alejandro was sent by by his mother to the one-time Spanish colony, Colombia, when he was a radical student ‘THEN’ and reappears ‘NOW’ as a Colombian ‘migrant’ seeking work, presented in episodic scenes as these words are projected on the stage set walls, was meant to be put together in our minds in a similar way. But I found the complexities of the emotional relationships between the characters in the families, and the time gaps, left me too confused.
By the end I think I have worked out a rough idea that Alejandro’s mother saved his life; and I understood how awful autocratic government is, but I didn’t feel personally engaged in the characters as I had in When the rain stops falling, or as in his other famous play, Speaking in Tongues.
I can imagine, though, how strongly the audience in Madrid must have felt for these characters, drawing on their personal histories of families in conflict in Spain throughout the last century. However I must say that I couldn’t see the relevance of the homosexual aspects of the story while watching the play. Only afterwards can I see that perhaps this was about the politics of a right-wing government – but only because of my knowledge of history rather than because of what was done or said in the play.
I must admit that this raises the question of my not being able to pick up all of the words actually spoken. My old age and hearing aids were probably part of the problem in the acoustics of Belvoir, which are quite deadened by the three-quarters surrounding bodies of the audience. The work of movement and intimacy director Nigel Poulton, with such experienced actors, certainly showed me what the characters felt in each short scene, but I needed much greater clarity in the voicing, especially of the men, to know what exactly they were saying.
So though for me on the night the theatre was not entirely ‘powerful', ‘epic’, nor ‘utterly enthralling’, I certainly appreciated the strength of the acting and the importance of the intention in writing about the horror of dictatorial power – not only in Spain in the past but in so many countries around the world, including ironically in the very Colombia that Alejandro was sent to for his safety.
His final speech in memory of the poet/playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, assassinated in Spain in 1936, gives the play its strength of purpose and the reason for not missing Song of First Desire.
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| Borja Maestre as Alejandro in Song of First Desire by Andrew Bovell Belvoir Theatre 2025 Photo: Brett Boardman |
