AND THEY PUT HANDCUFFS ON THE FLOWERS
Set in a Spanish prison, where four revolutionaries have been condemned for crimes against an authoritarian state, Handcuffs is, in Arrabal’s words, “to be thought of as a shout.” Specifically it’s a shout against the atrocities of the Franco regime, as well as a shout on behalf of human dignity. Arrabal writes from firsthand knowledge, having lived under Franco as a child and become a political prisoner himself in Spain in 1967. This experience seems to have had a profound effect on his work. While his pre-1967 plays have a clarity and simplicity reminiscent of Beckett, his later plays are characterized by delirium and dissonance, described by one critic as “the gentle hell of the unconscious.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The overt politics of Arrabal’s Handcuffs are utterly straightforward, intentionally naive. The state controls the media, the church, and the judiciary. Prisoners are executed for any espousal of the rights of the individual. Trials that last six minutes have gone on far too long, especially since sentences are decided before hearings even begin. The revolutionaries in the play fight for justice and democracy in generic terms. As Tosan (Michael John Stewart), the chief revolutionary, proclaims in his epiphanic scene, “We must open the prison and disband the army. The emancipation of man must be total. And revolution is the only answer.” Hardly a sophisticated argument, but one with deeply felt passions behind it.
As a result this production reinforces the very constraints Handcuffs seeks to overthrow. The religious act of sexual or nonsexual union is reduced again and again to masturbation, rape, or simulated intercourse. The body in this production is profane.
