The House of Bernarda Alba

by

Frederico Garcia Lorca

Trans: David Hare

I always find it more interesting writing reviews when I disagree with the majority verdict; it is not the joy of perversity, but it is good to know I don't always have to agree with the critics.  So if you are thinking of seeing the National Theatre's current production of The House of Bernarda Alba, you should be aware that this is very much a minority report.  The plot is simply explained; set in rural Spain in 1936, Matriarch Bernarda Alba rules supreme, keeping her five daughters locked up in a reign of tyranny.  All the characters on stage are women, but their entire focus is on the world of men.  It looks as if the eldest daughter is going to escape, but two of her sisters are equally obsessed with the same man and it all ends in tragedy.  I suspect this is a wonderful play, but this was not a wonderful production.

I liked the set a great deal.  We are so clearly in Spain - marble, tiles, pillars... It couldn't be anywhere else.  And that is for me where it all goes so horribly wrong.  David Hare's translation - my God the man is prolific at the moment, I think this is the fourth David Hare play I've seen in the last 15 months - is largely OK, but for me was too modern.  Adela saying 'whatever' to her mother was just not 1936, oppressive Spain.  Again, following the opening funeral scene, when the never-seen man of the house is buried, the girls all change into strikingly modern clothing.  It may be 1930s style, but hardly 1930's rural Spain.  And the point of the story and the tension in the drama is that it is all so puritanical (alright, I know its Catholic Puritanism but it is the best word) and the light, colourful dresses the daughters are wearing hardly gets the point over. It seems to me that the play is set in a very specific time and in a very specific place, yet the production tries to set in everywhere at any time.  This is particularly so with the youngest daughter, who is a modern brat; she is wilful, rude, flighty, physically dancing, throwing herself around, going off into fantasies.  She is a thoroughly modern teenager, possibly a 1930s New York teenager (just possibly) but 1936 rural Spanish teenager?  The longer the play progressed, the less I believed her; the less I believed her, the more the tension, for me at least, drained away.

The play isn't helped by having two intervals.  The first occurs just as you have got the measure of everyone and what the agenda is.  The second comes at what for me was the emotional climax of the play; an unfortunate girl in the village has killed her illegitimate baby and is being murdered by the men of the village.  This is all off-stage and was shockingly emotional.  It never regained those heights in the final act. And that final act is so laboured, so clichéd.  Not only do we have the symbolism of the stallion kicking the shed door, but just in case we miss it the storm breaks, lightening and thunder (and eventually rain itself falls on the National stage).  For me this was all over-done, and too obvious.  The final disappointment was the the tragic end, apart from having been so heavily signalled, was nothing more than a cacophony of screaming as the various women  understood the consequences.

But fundamentally, I feel that modernising the language or the look of the play is to destroy its power, which is all about a place and a time, and that is just what this production has done.

Yet I still could see a wonderful play struggling to get out. Lorca's symbolism is a much finer tool than the horses hooves would suggest.  The backwardness of the Spanish countryside is made so obvious; the society it describes is medieval, male-dominated and crushed by Catholicism.  Into this backward society we see the Empress Bernarda, the Franco still in waiting to take over the troubled country and tame its creative and libertine spirits for the next half century.  The play is clear-sighted and deeply political.  So much so, that he was murdered by Franco's right-wing thugs a matter of weeks after writing it.  They at least understood the point of Lorca's writing.

The principal two older actresses - Penelope Wilton as the haughty dictator and Deborah Findlay as the housekeeper Poncia - were excellent and there was comedy supplied from the nameless household servant, played by Pamela Merrick. It was not a bad production, just a disappointment, as I felt it could have been a great one.  And since I seem to be the only person who thinks like this, and the play is in rep for the entire summer, you should go along and find out for yourself! 

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