Frances Arroyo and Joan Villafañe’s 45-minute courtroom drama Convicted Flower concerns itself with Roberta. Virtually imprisoned in her own house, she suffers a decade of domestic abuse from a brutal drunken husband. Traumatised, isolated, and desperate to protect her infant daughter, she hides a kitchen knife under her pillow. The next time her husband attempts to rape her, she stabs him to death. “My husband is dead; I am finally free” she cries, as she reports her actions to the police.
Now three years into a long sentence, Roberta (Villafañe who also plays both defence and prosecution lawyers) finally has a chance at an appeal against her conviction for murder. The audience is her jury. Prepare to receive a pencil and ballot-paper on arrival.
Arroyo and Villafañe draw the character of Roberta from a late ‘80s play by Juan González Bonilla that concerns guards and inmates in a Puerto Rican women’s prison. The cultural transition from tough, gang-controlled Caribbean penitentiary to stuffy English courtroom is one of several things in this production that fails to convince. UK female prisoners do not habitually wear orange jump suits, rarely fashion shanks from spoons for gang fights, and mostly do not have to plead with sadistic prison officers not to shoot them. The offstage reporter’s news coverage of the trial features a tad more Latino expressiveness than one normally associates with the BBC.
Roberta’s barrister argues self-defence. The prosecution argue premeditation and planning. There is a 15-minute monologue in the middle of the piece that seems to suggest Roberta has turned into the prison’s drug baron. The question as to why Roberta stayed in her toxic relationship, or what kind of cumulative pressure drove her to such drastic action, remains frustratingly unanswered.
In the absence of much actual evidence, at the end of the show you may feel like you are voting on the principle of protecting women from domestic abuse, rather than the specifics of Roberta’s case. The press showing’s jury was one short of the standard 12 and, though not unanimous, skewed strongly towards one side of the argument over Roberta’s culpability. This feels very much like work in progress.
Writers: Frances Arroyo & Joan Villafañe inspired by Flor de Presidio by Juan González Bonilla.
Director: Frances Arroyo
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