Kate Bookallil in Frida. Image: Mansoor Noor.
Frida Kahlo: Viva La Vida, the latest production from Théâtre Excentrique, explores the beloved Mexican artist’s life, times and philosophy. Adapted from Humberto Robles’ original Spanish script by Gael Le Cornec and Luis Benkard, the production showcases inspired direction from Anna Jahjah and a magnificent performance by Kate Bookallil as Kahlo.
As the audience enters, Kahlo is lying on a bed in a white shift-like dress with a black and gold mask over her face. Nearby, a skeleton sits in a wheelchair. The backdrop is a white wall that is used for projections and attaching artwork and that also features two doves in bullet holes.
Kahlo’s many layers of costume, which include some of the outfits depicted in her iconic portraits, conceal the scars caused by the appalling tram car accident that ruined her insides and, as the artist herself put it, took her virginity. The plaster cast that she wears for support is an artwork in itself, delineating her injuries.
Bookallil is charismatic, feisty, and defiant in the titular role as the artist determined to overcome the obstacles in her life and express herself through her art. She dances despite her wounds.
The play is a meditation on death, mortality and the strength and fragility of the human body. Powerful visual symbols – white skull-like plaster casts, fractured self-portraits, wings, red and yellow floral festoons – echo the imagery of Kahlo’s art.
As Kahlo, Bookallil makes up her face to look like the artist, complete with monobrow and faint moustache. At other times she feverishly draws on large pieces of paper, speaks directly to the audience (sometimes sitting in among them), or unearths garlands from beneath the feet of the front row.
Over the course of the show, we learn about various aspects of Frida’s life and ideas, including her thoughts on Trotsky, Rockefeller, New York, France, Mexico and the art world, and a smidge about her politics. A major aspect of the show is her relationship with Diego Rivera, the artist she married, divorced, remarried, and shared with two other wives. Rivera is represented by a large drawing in his style.
Kahlo repeatedly refers to herself as ‘the artist who gave birth to herself’. Frida Kahlo: Viva La Vida is a startling, vibrant portrait of an artist who in her works painted to reveal her inner turmoil and fascination with her broken body, becoming a feminist symbol and a beacon for women in the arts.
4 stars ★★★★
Frida Kahlo: Viva La Vida
Théâtre Excentrique
Written by Humberto Robles and adapted by Gael Le Cornec and Luis Benkard
Directed by Anna Jahjah
Kate Bookallil as Frida Kahlo
Assistant Director: Bérangère Graham-Dupuy
Language and cultural consultants: Ana Cuellar and Kris Shalvey
Lighting Designer: Larry Kelly
Costume Designer: Olivia Auday
23 April – 4 May
Old 505 Theatre, Newtown NSW
