The Granny and the Heist/La estanquera de Vallecas by José Luis Alonso de SantosStuart GreenLucy Meyer

Abstract

MLR, .,   analysis of women’s roles is central to the argument, a theoretical framework for the study of gender in relation to socio-economic contexts could productively be drawn out further. e chapter on the cuestión social in Misericordia outlines the text’s representation of female characters who are reliant on begging and other forms of charity; however, further development of Galdós’s contradictory response to contemporary debates, including the ways in which bourgeois discourses about the indigent masses presented women as a particular threat, would be welcome here. Similarly, the study of lending and social advancement could usefully draw out existing academic paradigms about gender and the exchange economy through a crucial focus on the treatment of the female body. Minor caveats aside, this highly informative and well-researched book is a welcome addition to scholarship on how we read Galdós’s fiction in response to the rapidly changing society in which he lived, a time characterized—as Ridao Carlini asserts—by a perception of socio-economic uncertainty. Rich and Poor in Nineteenth-Century Spain enhances understanding of Galdós’s critical representation of the socio-economic developments that shaped both his novels and late nineteenth-century Spain. U  E K M e Granny and the Heist/La estanquera de Vallecas. By J L A  S. Translation and introduction by S G; teaching resources by S G and L M. (Aris and Phillips Hispanic Classics) Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. .  pp. £ (pbk £.). ISBN –––– (pbk ––––). is volume contains an Introduction; a bilingual, facing-page edition of La estanquera de Vallecas (e Granny and the Heist), a play written by José Luis Alonso de Santos in  and first staged in ; and a section on teaching resources for secondary and undergraduate university students. e Introduction, written by theatre scholar Stuart Green, contextualizes the play, outlines the themes of poverty and marginalization, class, rebellion, love, and friendship, and captures the linguistic playfulness, (sometimes slapstick) humour, and social message of the play. Green also tells us about the dramatist, José Luis Alonso de Santos, explaining how his experience of the experimental and socially aware independent theatre in s and s Spain (still under a dictatorship) informs this landmark play. A section on characters introduces the mostly loveable maverick Gran, the protagonist, her granddaughter Ángeles, and the two out-ofwork builders turned amateur thieves, Leandro and Tocho (clearly inspired by the picaresque tradition), who are set, firstly against each other and, later, against the representatives of the establishment (especially the police inspector Maldonado). Elements of the Spanish theatrical genre of the sainete are evident in the picture we are given of the working-class, marginalized community that they all belong to. A brief plot summary is very useful and captures the comedy of the robberyturned -hostage situation alongside the realization by all of those involved that  Reviews they, as members of this downtrodden community, have more in common than they thought. In very accessible language, Green gives the student the background needed to understand the play’s themes as well as to open it up to broader interpretation and application to the discussion of such themes in other social and political contexts. e play itself is a tragicomic caper with a social message that both captures a particular moment in Spain’s post-dictatorship history and transcends that moment to speak to human concerns of community, solidarity, and trust. It deserves to be more widely known in the English-speaking world. is translation, the first British English translation of the play (Phyllis Zatlin produced an American English one, Hostages in the Barrio, published by Estreno in ), is prepared, as Green explains, both for performance and for a British audience with different cultural references and slang from what was current among the original audience of the play. e translation choices made to deal with this, including the employment of a language inspired by British television comedies of the early s, work very well, allowing for a natural-sounding dialogue in translation without losing the humour and colloquial brilliance of the original (‘Will you shut up, you moron?’ (p. ); ‘for crying out loud, Gran!’ (p. ); ‘stop her, Leandro. e old bat’s aer...