Cheek by Jowl - Life is a Dream/La Vida es Sueño

Yes, they can be.  I don't remember particularly enjoying this the one time I saw it.  But I've seen several Lope de Vega plays which worked very well:  Fuente Ovejuna (Donellan at the NT in about 1990, I would guess) and Peribanez and the Young Vic about 20 years ago directed by a young Rufus Norris.  

I haven't found that. I'd say what you get from them are competent good-but-not-great productions that recycle staging ideas that were fresh in the 1980s but are over-familiar now. Always worth seeing though. About the best I've seen from them is their final scene in Cymbeline which played it absolutely seriously and was surprisingly moving. 

I enjoyed this very much last night. I had only the vaguest memories of the play having seen a version in the 90s that came down to London from Scotland, I seem to remember. There are elements of Shakespeare's late plays in there (foolish fathers and their children), but the play is very much sui generis, though as a former German student the whole dream-reality thing is very much part of that culture too (I did think of Kleist on occasion!). Played straight through for two hours with no interval (good decision). I'd be interested to hear what Spanish people who know the play thought; the audience loved it, and in that continental way managed to come on for five bows at the end, a constrast to the stingy one bow I had earlier in the day at Streetcar.

Seeing it tonight. Their production of Tis Pity She's A Whore a few years back was sensational, in the very best way. I'm happy enough to read surtitles but I would love to see another English language production from Cheek by Jowl. They seem to have rather given up on that, though their sense of theatre remains unbeatable.