Carlos Pon’s Guerra’s Mariposa, The Place, London – running time 102 minutes including interval by reviewer David Woodward
A critic friend once wrote himself out of a job by writing that there was nothing he could usefully write about his evening. His reader simply had to experience it for themselves. It’s tempting to say just that about Mariposa, which is almost so completely and remarkably itself as to require no further justification.
However, this queer dance take on Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly deserves better than that. Carlos Pons Guerra is a Gran Canaria born choreographer with a self-described penchant for ‘kitsch, melodrama and high camp’. Mariposa turns the story of Cio-Cio-San and Lieutenant Pinkerton on its head in a devastating spectacle of thwarted male physicality.
The setting is Havana. Mariposa is a Cuban sex worker, danced superbly by Harry Alexander, who meets the initially reluctant western sailor Preston (Daniel Baines). Alexander has a huge presence and an absolute commitment to story-telling in every move and facial expression. Elle Fierce, Bjorn Aslund and Holly Saw complete the casting. Fierce is notable as a cigar-smoking love goddess who commands the sex workers’ twerking.
Mariposa falls in love with Preston and ditches everything in the hope of winning him. When Preston’s wife appears, Mariposa transforms himself into a travestied version of western womanhood, symbolised in a poignant struggle to adopt European pointe shoes.
Mariposa maysometimes be raw, but it’s also energetically uncompromising, stylish and deeply involving. Moments of comedy meld with the tragedy. It combines aspects of Afro-Cuban Santería religious practice with references to the Cuban AIDS crisis and ends with a cathartic vision of light and hope. Story rather than balletic spectacle drives everything.
A driving soundtrack by Luis Miguel Cobo mashes up Puccini, percussion and Spanish song. Moody lighting by Barnaby Booth and an atmospheric design by Ryan Laight complete the creation of the space.
Mariposa continues its tour to Mansfield, Leeds and Wolverhampton to 21 March.
Images (c) Nacho Gonzalez
