House of Bernarda Alba (Theatre)

House of Bernarda Alba

(Synopsis & Reviews)

Synopsis:

The House of Bernarda Alba is Federico Garcia Lorca’s last play, written the year he was killed at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The play was completed by the Spanish playwright just two months before he was killed by supporters of Franco in 1936. Set in early 1930’s Spain, it tells of five daughters whose lives revolve around their mother Bernarda Alba and their off-the-wall grandmother. After their father has died, Bernarda demands that they mourn the loss for eight years – until tensions build to a boiling point.

Sally Hawkins plays the role of Adela in David Hare’s English version of Lorca’s play. Adela, age 20, is the youngest, most attractive, spirited, and rebellious of Bernarda’s daughters. As Magdalena says of her, Adela “still has her illusions,” and thus has difficulty submitting to the strong will of her mother, who keeps all the daughters under tight reign. As a form of rebellion, Adela puts on a green birthday dress and goes out in the yard shouting “Chickens, look at me!” She craves social interaction and cannot bear to be locked away from the world. She has a deep connection to nature, yearning to be free of the house and breathe the fresh air of the fields. As the conflict with her mother’s will intensifies, Adela’s defiance is symbolized in her breaking of the walking stick with which Bernarda has beaten her daughters. Ultimately, Adela chooses death as a means of escape from an intolerable life when the only alternative she can envision-Pepe-is no longer available.

Critics’ Reviews: (#1)

Lorca called his 1936 play a “photographic document”; and Howard Davies‘ fine new production observes that faithfully, turning Lorca’s realism into a metaphor for fascism. A good evening is spoilt only by Vicki Mortimer’s design, which makes no allowance for Lyttelton sightlines and lacks the necessary sense of entrapment.

David Hare’s new version, however, leaves little doubt of the play’s political resonance. Even before we see the newly-widowed Bernarda Alba she is described as “empress of all she surveys”, and, when she appears, it is clear that she rules her five daughters with a whim of iron. But the play’s tragedy springs from her doomed attempt to thwart their libertarian instinct; and, although she seeks to marry off her eldest daughter to the unseen Pepe el Romano, it is the youngest who craves his love and duly pays the price.

Penelope Wilton’s excellent Bernarda Alba is no melodramatic villainness but a woman trapped in a destructive moral code and enthralled by power; and never more chilling than when she uses the brothel background of her servant, Poncia, as evidence against her. Deborah Findlay, who was in Nuria Espert’s legendary 1987 production, also turns Poncia into a figure of mutinous servitude and peasant wisdom.

And, amongst the daughters, Sandy McDade as the gawky bride-to-be and Sally Hawkins as the youngest, with a fire of desire raging in her loins, are outstanding. Everything is done to bring out Lorca’s poetic realism except for making the house itself – simultaneously prison, convent and home – the play’s real star.
~ Michael Billington, The Guardian

Critics’ Reviews: (#2)

At the top of Howard Davies‘ revival of The House of Bernarda Alba, a servant pauses while sweeping the yard to gaze up at a passing plane. The gentle purr of propellers on Paul Groothuis‘ sound design immediately roots us in a pre-Guernica Spain, where the sky holds nothing manmade to fear.

The playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca, was murdered by followers of Franco eight months before German bombers rained hell on Guernica. This sound-cue may play around with time, but it is as portentous as the bells that toll on the day Bernarda Alba’s husband is buried.

As well as finding a social parallel in the tyrannical regime Bernarda Alba (Penelope Wilton) inflicts on her five daughters, it chimes subtly with an audience in a country engaged in a war. David Hare, whose new English version this is, laces this context through the play, letting it underpin Lorca’s masterpiece of poetic realism.

The widowed Bernarda Alba confines her daughters to her Andalusian farmhouse, preserving through repression her old-world, Catholic values. The sexual tension that builds has all the sedition of a revolution. Davies, the director, has hewn finely detailed relationships between the excellent actors playing the sisters.

Wilton’s Bernarda is no mere ogress, but a real, deeply complex woman. So deep is her realistic approach that there are moments where her reign of terror seems driven by a palpable sense of humanising fear. But when she remembers the aphrodisiac qualities of power, she is mesmeric in her self-possession. Deborah Findlay’s servant Poncia is a gossipy, earthy everywoman whose lust for life won’t be paved over by Bernarda’s oppressive tenet: “It doesn’t matter what we show: only what we let ourselves show.” She finds echoes in Sally Hawkins‘ excellent Adela, whose burgeoning sexuality threatens to engulf the house. The compelling Sandy McDade invests the eldest, spinster sister Angustias with a deep well of sourness.

Vicki Mortimer’s set – a Moorish, pillared courtyard – must feel appositely like a prison exercise yard to the actors, although its sumptuousness fails to register any sense of confinement out front. However, oppressive heat is conveyed vividly in Paule Constable’s lighting design.

But no set could daunt this cast. Lorca’s poetry remains tantalisingly subtextual, resonating in the mind. His realism, meanwhile, is served impeccably by a raft of startling performances.    ~ Adam Scott, The Independent

Critics’ Reviews: (#3)

Outstanding acting abounds in Howard Davies‘ well-honed and electrifying production. Penelope Wilton is quite simply brilliant in the lead role as Bernarda. She strides majestically around her totalitarian domain, sneering with contempt in everyone’s direction and never failing to resort to violence when necessary to ‘beat her daughters into submission’. And she totally ignores the pleas of her housekeeper, Poncia (excellently played by Deborah Findlay), to treat her daughters more liberally.

When acting is of such a uniformly high standard it’s not easy (or even fair) to single-out individual performances. But of the supporting cast, particular note must go to Sally Hawkins as Adela who ‘owned the stage’ at several points in the play, and proved a worthy and highly-strung ‘revolutionary’ willing to give up everything to secure an identity and live life on her own terms.

Gripping and totally engrossing, The House of Bernada Alba is a superb production of a masterpiece – truly a ‘must see’.    ~ Peter Brown, London Theatre Guide

Other Reviews:

…And there are notable performances from Sandy McDade as gawky Angustias and Deborah Findlay as a shrewd servant as well as from Wilton, a Bernarda who is baleful and bitter enough to avoid accusations of sentimentality when she suggests a touch of suppressed sweetness just before her little world implodes. (She is, we feel, a victim too.) There’s also some genuine passion from Sally Hawkins, playing young, doomed Adela. Maybe she doesn’t bring Iberian intensity to lines like -when I look into his eyes it’s as if I’m supping his blood-; but her wordless writhing, twistings and wailings ensure that, at least here, we feel the pain and ignominy of sexual repression…    ~ Times Online

…Jo McInnes‘ hunch-backed martyr, the straight-talking Martirio, knows that she can never have her man but is determined that if she cannot then neither will her youngest sister, Adela. Sally Hawkins gives a lovely performance as the girl who is unable to hold back, even if her actions must bring disgrace to herself and the family. The final fight between these two is physical as well as verbal. It can only end in tears or worse and by the close of this three-act, two interval, two-and-three quarter hours, the family and, by implication, the country will never be the same again…    ~ Philip Fisher, The British Theatre Guide

…The youngest, most spirited sister Adela is played admirably by Sally Hawkins, especially in the scene when she writhes in empathetic pain for an unmarried village girl who gave birth and is viciously hunted down…    ~ Charlotte Loveridge, Curtain Up

Our Reviews:

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