I’ll Melt the Snow off a Volcano with a Match
The Pit, Barbican,
London EC2
4/5

A theatre group researching the background of Mexico’s political system comes across a forgotten book, The Institutionalised Revolution — it fascinates them and so initiates two intertwined narratives, one — the life of Natalia the author of the said book, a militant activist of the teachers’ union and, the second — the politics of modern Mexico.

The point of departure is the extraordinarily long-lasting hold on power by the Party of Institutionalised Revolution (PRI), which in 1929 appropriated the revolutionary ideals of Cardenas, Zapata and Villa for the national bourgeoisie and kept repackaging them every six years as mass consumption election fodder.

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol — lizards left in the sun — believe that: “The politics are in the process not the concrete results,” and, interestingly, they assert that they “are not victims of PRI but the result,” which diametrically alters the debate and makes their audience complicit to encourage protagonist response.

Rudimentary staging makes all the props distinct and unfussy, and scene changes seamless. The minimalist acting of Luisa Pardo, Gabino Rodriguez (below) — who together wrote the play — and Francisco Barreiro is a joy throughout and periodically stuns with great emotive charge.

The riveting satire they apply to the operetta-like parade of successive PRI candidates and presidents — aided with back-projection of newsreels — is a hoot even with sparse surtitles.

The PRI populist mask finally slips in 1968 when on the eve of the Olympic Games president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz allows the massacre of 400 students in Tlatelolco.

Finally the two narratives come disturbingly together in 2012. Natalia’s son Artemio has just voted PRI — back in power after a hiatus of 12 years. His mother — threatened by her own trade union — disappeared in 2000 and all attempts to locate her to this day have failed. Both truths hurt — the future an unknown.

The cast cover the props with blue and green tarpaulin and vanish — it begins to rain.

They do not reappear for the tumultuous applause — a surtitle thanks the audience for their attendance — you can almost hear Bertolt Brecht wolf-whistling his appreciation.

Review by Michal Boncza