Tejas Verdes
Tejas Verdes
7.30pm, Gate Theatre, 11 Pembridge Road, W11. £14, £7 concs. Tube: Notting Hill Gate
Tejas Verdes - Green Gables - was the opulent seaside hotel which became General Pinochet's detention and torture centre in Chile. The barbarity of his dictatorship is refracted through Fermin Cabal's horrifying, true-life account of the torture and murder of a young woman who loves an opponent of the regime. Director Thea Sharrock and designer Dick Bird have imaginatively dramatised Cabal's script, which consists of seven monologues. Instead of taking the text, lyrically translated by Robert Shaw, on its own terms, Miss Sharrock conveys the poetic and spiritual potential. Gemma Jones (above), as the gravedigger, stars in a production that casts a disturbing spell.
Nicholas de Jongh
020 7229 0706
