Comedy 'Y todo por un pavo' packs Yaiza's Casa de la Cultura

The main hall was not enough. 'Y todo por un pavo', staged on Tuesday by the theatre group of the Asociación Cultural Almurcia in Yaiza, filled the Casa de la Cultura Benito Pérez Armas and spilled over into the building's courtyard, where the audience watched the performance on a large screen.

The play is written and directed by Magdalena Cáceres. It follows a family that, egged on by its patriarch, goes to unimaginable lengths to get hold of its treasure: a turkey. The plot piles up one improbable situation after another, handled with a strong costumbrista flavour — the Canarian comedy of manners built on local speech, family habits and small-town quirks.

The cast is made up of Yaiza residents rather than professional actors, carefully costumed and made up for the occasion. Much of the laughter comes from recognition: the audience knows the people on stage, and knows exactly the kind of family argument being parodied.

Amateur theatre remains one of the steadiest cultural engines in Lanzarote's smaller municipalities. Groups like Almurcia rehearse for months on modest means, and when they open they fill rooms that touring programmes rarely manage to sell out.

Yaiza's Casa de la Cultura: worth checking if you are in the south

The Benito Pérez Armas building, in the centre of Yaiza village, hosts theatre, book launches, concerts and exhibitions through the year. Local productions tend to be announced only a few days in advance and seats go quickly, as this performance showed, so arriving half an hour early is a sensible precaution. One thing to know before you go: costumbrista comedy leans heavily on the Canarian accent and on wordplay, so a decent level of Spanish makes a real difference. Even so, the physical humour and the costumes carry a good part of the show.