Lola: The Life of Lola Montez
Lola Montez was an internationally famous flamenco dancer. Born in 1821 she lived until the age of 40 and throughout these four decades she gained popularity (and infamy) for a multitude of reasons besides her dancing.
Her free, colourful life and love affairs were well documented, especially her liaison with Ludwig I King of Bavaria, who made his mistress Countess of Landsfeld despite a strong opposition from his advisors and the Bavarian aristocracy who saw her as no more than a cheap courtesan. This relationship is likely to have contributed to the once popular King’s fall from grace which partly caused Ludwig to abdicate in 1848 and Lola to flee Bavaria.
But who was this mysterious woman with her wild ways and burning blue eyes, dancing and sleeping her way through the world? This is exactly what Emily Gray, artistic director of Trestle, set out to find out with the play Lola: The Life of Lola Montez.
The play starts with Lola, played by Georgina Roberts, singing behind a curtain accompanied only by a Spanish guitar. As she comes forth to address the audience as if we were at a lecture (Lola’s last days before her death at 40 were spent touring the USA giving talks about her life), a spectator dressed in puritanical attire descends onto the stage, accusing Lola of fabricating and embellishing her life.
The accuser is Miriam “Mimi” Follin (Fiona Putnam), one time dancer and Lola’s protégé. For Mimi the renowned flamenco dancer is nothing more than an opportunist of easy virtue who stopped at nothing to get what she wanted in life.
From here onwards the women battle it out on stage, one to prove she did no wrong in the way she lived, the other to prove the immorality of the dancer’s existence.
Lola’s life and vicissitudes are rewound and played out in front of us. Roberts and Putnam take on several different characters, with the latter excelling in the male roles and the former a master of foreign accents and comic timing. But the play is not just words: this is a text piece with strong elements of dance and physical theatre. Every sound, every look, every smile is as big as a special effect and the small space at the Riverside Studios makes it work perfectly.
There are very few props: only a fan, castanets, costumes and a trunk. These objects serve to describe several things, including Mimi’s pregnant belly and later her baby (all of this achieved through the creative use of a fan.)
Music and sound effects are provided by flamenco guitarist Ricardo Garcia’s who also plays Lola’s last lover.
The acting is terrific. Chapman embodies Montez perfectly with her mischievous ways, her burning fire, her free will and her passion, standing up for herself as a woman, as a dancer and as the original girl who reinvented herself.
Putnam too is outstanding switching from playing a young puritanical Irish girl to a lecherous gentleman. There’s a palpable chemistry between the actors, a perfectly honed dynamic that makes this play quite perfect. The story sucks you in, the laughs are endless and the use of little to create a lot is genius.
In an hour and a half Trestle give us a dancing, singing, funny biopic, with a bit of sauce too.
But then who is our heroine? She’s not a dancer by training but she sells out theatres around the world, she sounds and looks Spanish but we discover pretty soon that Iberian she’s not, she causes royal havoc but many have forgotten her. Who is she and what is she really accused of?
Mimi too is not without sin but is her anger really directed at Lola or at herself?
The play in the end is not anymore about Lola than it is about judgement and more specifically the double standards that still plague women.
This play is more relevant now than ever in these celebrity obsessed times. And, after all the progress of the last century, it’s women who still pay the highest price. A must see.
Stef Bottinelli
Lola will start touring again in March, check
www.trestle.org.uk for dates and venues.
