Director William Gaskill, yes he of the Royal Court from 1965-1972, has produced a simple but effective staging - the cast stripped to their bare bones in skeleton cat suits for the beginning and end of the performance, the whole overshadowed by the entrances beside cradle and coffin. God views the scene, once he's stepped off stage, from a wooden box easily imagined as a cart-top drawn into the medieval marketplace.
The music, composed by Andrew Dickson, that appears throughout is an odd but effective blend of ethereal religious choir voices and rolicking folksy guitar for the slapstick; the interludes of dance are another nod to the 17th-century tradition.
Madhav Sharma makes a fine God: he has gravitas and presence, but why, you have to wonder, is he dressed as, and played as, a Moor, almost indeed an oriental musician. Surely Calderon, who finished his life as a priest after early military adventures, would be horrified. It seems an unnecessary distraction to an otherwise effective blend of modern and historic.
There were a few wobbles from the generally young company on opening night tonight - a few stumbled lines and some of the music is swallowed by the cavern of the Arcola, failing to re-emerge in comprehensible form.
But overall this is a slick, well-thought-out production. Plenty of laughs, plenty of pathos; it would have played well in a medieval marketplace. And if today the audience leaves wondering just how you could believe in such a God, well perhaps that's no bad thing.
The Great Theatre of the World continues at the Arcola until August 18 (with online booking.)
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