Marquez’s classic comes alive

Fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez can look forward to a rare performance of a play based on the iconic writer’s novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold in the national capital. A collaborative work by Manjari Kaul and Promona Sengupta, the performance is an unusual combination of the use of storytelling technique and characters’ first person accounts that are sometimes varying, some similar, some shaky, at times minutely detailed and some fading recollection of the murder of Santiago Nasar, the organisers said.

The adaptation of the play was organised by The Improper Fractions in association with Instituto Cervantes, Penguin Random House and India International Centre on April 30. 

Chronicle Of A Death Foretold, first published in 1981, speaks about the mysterious death of a young man, and chronologically retraces the situations that led to this baffling murder. The novella commences on the deceptively harmless morning of the day when Santiago Nasar was murdered. The story then retraces backwards, introducing Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman, a couple about to get married.

It is then disclosed, that on their wedding night, Roman discovers that Angela is not a virgin and returns her to her maiden house. Upon investigating, Angela’s twin brothers discover that Santiago Nasar is the man responsible for this disgraceful situation, and they set out to kill him. 

The day Nasar dies is the same day the Bishop comes to town to bless the newly wedded couple. In the chaos and excitement that accompany the anticipation of the Bishop’s arrival, a series of unheeded warnings and events unfold that ultimately lead to the Vicario brothers stabbing Nasar on his front door.

The Vicario family leaves town, and the brothers are ultimately imprisoned for three years. Angela, who realized that she had fallen in love with Roman the night he returned her home, decides to write him letters every week. 

Chronicle Of A Death Foretold? was adapted into a Spanish film in 1987, and was later adapted into a Broadway musical in 1995. Marquez who also wrote Love in the Time of Cholera, No One Writes to the Colonel, The General in His Labyrinth, and The Autumn of the Patriarch besides his epic 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude died at the age of 87.