A theater company co-founded by one of Britain's premier actresses will stage three performances of a critically acclaimed translation of the Spanish play 隆Ay Carmela! at Old Main theater on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus.
The performances will take place Dec. 11-13 at 7:30 p.m. and will be free and open to the public. The play is a co-production of the theater companies Ensemble and York Theatre Royal and comes to Colorado on the heels of a successful U.K. tour and a hit run in London's renowned West End theater district.
Ensemble co-founder and actress Elizabeth Mansfield will play the lead role, and co-founder and writer Steve Trafford, who translated the play, will give a short, pre-show talk before each performance.
Sponsors include CU-Boulder's English department, the Martin and Gloria Trotsky Fund, the college of arts and sciences' center for arts and humanities, and the arts and sciences dean's fund for excellence.
"With the arrival on campus of Elizabeth Mansfield and her Ensemble, the university community will be treated to one of England's preeminent actresses and to a performance that has earned rave reviews in England," said CU-Boulder English professor Paul Levitt. "The University of Colorado and the Boulder community have precious few opportunities to see work of this quality. If you miss 隆Ay Carmela! you do so at your own cultural peril."
Mansfield said Trafford's English-language translations of Edith Piaf's songs and Bertolt Brecht's The Mother had been widely acclaimed in previous Ensemble productions.
"His masterly translation of 隆Ay Carmela! brings Sinisterra's original work to life," she added. "We believe the play can now take its proper place in the English repertoire of European classics."
Set in the Spanish civil war era, 隆Ay Carmela! is the award-winning work of Jos茅 Sanch铆s Sinisterra, a scholar, theater director and influential playwright credited with transforming the contemporary Spanish stage. The play, which debuted in 1987 in Zaragoza, Spain, tells the story of Carmela and Paulino, a vaudeville comedy team forced to perform for Spain's strong-arm ruler Francisco Franco and his troops. A 1990 film based on the play starred well-known Spanish actors Carmen Maura and Andr茅s Pajares.
Mansfield, who has worked alongside film and stage luminaries such as Jeremy Irons, was nominated in 1996 for a Laurence Olivier Award as best actress for her performance in "Marie," a stage musical about the life and times of England's famed 19th-century music hall singer, Marie Lloyd. Actress Dame Judi Dench edged out Mansfield that year to win the award for her performance in Absolute Hell.
In 1991, Mansfield performed in "Marie" at CU-Boulder's Old Main, earning her company the local newspaper's Best of Boulder award for best actress and best play. Before she takes to the stage at Old Main again this month, she will teach a master class for CU-Boulder music and theater students. Levitt said the actress would "expose our students to instruction of a very high level."
Mansfield and Trafford have collaborated on numerous productions since their early days at London's Red Ladder Theatre. They co-founded Ensemble in 2000 "to create and tour new theater work, exploring the relationship between music and text."
The company's U.K. production of 隆Ay Carmela! elicited positive reviews from the British press, including The Times of London, which said the work was "cast in the flexible mould of magic realism, where the dead return to talk, remember and eat sweet quinces with the living."
For more information about Ensemble, visit .