Among the various dramatized readings, the one we dedicate to Lorca and to this major work shone with special intensity: "So let five years pass". What's more, it not only shone, it united all the participants in a sorcerer's way, it left us with a sensation of authentic connection, so much so that it electrified the hair. The fact is that after reading it there was a long silence that, just for a moment, transported us all to the brilliant dream that Lorca imagined for this work and from which we returned amazed, breaking into very strong applause that made the bookstore vibrate. Lorca has that spell.
This play is included within what was called the impossible theater, due to its difficulty of spectacular representation or comprehension. Margarita Xingu herself, in statements to the poet when he first read the text, told him that she did not understand the work, that it would be very difficult to bring it to the stage. Lorca, at the time he created this text, had put so much of himself into it, so much so that he was ahead of his time. He conceived an almost prophetic work, a dream that anticipated a fateful outcome. The title, "So let five years pass" is quite striking. So let five years pass, what? People would ask themselves. What has to happen in five years? Why wait for that time? For what? I'm sure many such questions came up at the time. It's normal, no one but him, you know how, he knew how to see beyond the present moment in which he was writing this work, perhaps the fruit of some dream he left in writing.
The work is autobiographical. The opera surrealism that the text gives off is highlighted on stage through the main character, the Young Man - Lorca himself - who talks to the projections of his different I, a sort of multiple identities that take on body and essence in the figure of the Old Man and Friends. All these characters are nothing more than representatives of the masks that Lorca has had to show in his real life. The Young Man's character has fallen madly in love with the Bride, but he keeps her waiting until five years have passed to show her his love. To let love pass, to live through what is postponed in time, which in reality is not to live but to let die, is the leitmotiv of the work. Thus, when those five years have passed, the Young Man wants to recover the Bride, but this one is no longer for him, therefore, the Young Man has to fall accidentally in love with another different woman who will not love him either.
There are two paintings, one belonging to the first act and the other closing the work in the third and last act, which give me goosebumps. The first of those paintings that I highlight the most is the one that stars the Child and the Cat. El Nino represents Lorca's frustrated paternity; El Cato/Gate the search for sexual identity, the struggle in which he fought all his life to defend his homosexuality. The scene, sad, moves the most temperate. As for the last painting that closes the work, it is of such a marked prophetic level that it is frightening. This painting will be staged by the Card Players and the Young Man. There are three Players, and they represent the reapers, as in Macbeth, who play with the thread of life and deal with the cards that each one has to play. The tension increases as the Players round up the Young Man with their moves. The desperation of the protagonist, his desire to live and not be able to escape from the cards on the table makes your heart come out through your mouth. You want to help him, but you are a spectator, you can only watch what happens. The young man does not have a good sleeve, he can lose the play. One of the three Players carries a weapon. It's time to put the cards on the table. Curtain.
Lorca defined theater as follows: "theater is the poetry that rises from the book and becomes human. And when it is done, it screams and talks, cries and despairs".
The characters in Lorca's theater wear masks, yes, but at the same time, they have bones and blood. So spend five years is dated in Granada, August 19, 1931. Five years later, in 1936, Federico Garcia Lorca was vilely murdered. From what we know so far, which is very little, it was three men - the three Card Players - who took Lorca into custody and one of them shot him. This is Lorca's power, the spell with which he bewitched us and of which he spoke at the beginning.
A play that escapes from his great dramas starring women and that demonstrates the immense capacity and talent that the brilliant poet possessed. Catedra, in a meticulously correct edition by Margarita Ucelay, offers an extensive study of the creative process and an analysis of the work and its characters that help to understand and come even closer to one of Federico Garcia Lorca's lesser-known and more original theatrical texts.