REVIEW: Harrowing classic The House of Bernarda Alba sees Playbox female cast on top form at the Dream Factory
Mourning glory
The House of Bernarda Alba, Dream Factory, Playbox Theatre, Warwick, 16th November
By Steve Sutherland
Have you ever heard of Luto riguroso? No? No worries. I’m here to fill you in. Luto riguroso is a tradition of mourning in Spain. There are two traditions, actually - Luto aliviado, which is the sort of mourning we’re used to here where you’re sad but kind of carry on with life as per usual, then there’s the riguroso which, as the sound of its name implies, is more severe, dictating a full withdrawal from worldly activities, the mandatory wearing of black and black only, confinement to one’s abode, banishment of all guests and entertainment of any sort and the curtailment for a designated time of all relationships with anyone outside the family, including betrothals and romantic dalliances.
You need to know all this because The House Of Bernarda Alba is about Luto riguroso in extremis. Eight years in extremis to be precise. The play was written by Federico Garcia Lorca in 1936, just before he was assassinated by Nationalist forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War. A depiction of a typical domestic set-up back in those days it entirely revolves around the titular Bernarda, a strict matriarch presiding with a rod of iron over her five daughters whom she has confined to the aforementioned eight years of grieving for her recently deceased second husband inside the house where the play takes place.
It’s dense, very tense, crawling towards tragedy as we gradually discover that not one, not two, but three of the sisters are in love with the same man – Pepe el Romano - a handsome lothario who visits nightly but is never seen. Nor are any other blokes. The male of the species is always imagined, conversationally assumed by all the ladies to be selfish, treacherous, untrustworthy, misogynist and domineering. Some of us chaps do have a little chivalry about us though so… ladies first. Playbox – being as much an educational as a presentational institution - is very fond of ensemble pieces and this is certainly that, the angst shared evenly and excellently between the eight (again eight!) principal characters.
There’s the eldest daughter, Phoebe Roberts’ anxious Angustias who’s inherited the lion’s share of her late father’s dosh and is engaged to Pepe who’s after her fortune. The youngest of the brood is Holly Page’s vibrant, rebellious Adela who is meeting up with Pepe on the quiet and is quite possibly pregnant with his child. Then there’s Eve Hatz playing Martirio, a bitter schemer on crutches who lusts after Pepe, Laura Hoerl’s Magdalena who was her daddy’s favourite and is now resigned to her spinsterish fate, and Millie Taylor’s timid, anything-for-a-quiet-life, wouldn’t-say-boo-to-a-goose Amelia.
Mery Sutherland is Maria Josefa, the grandma with dementia who’s mostly locked in her room and who sings a delusional lullaby to a lamb about being wed by the sea in one of the play’s most affecting scenes. Celine Delahaye is La Poncia, the family’s wise-but-world-weary and somewhat devious long-time servant and just about the only character Bernarda will listen to. Elysia Sully plays the authoritarian mother like a psycho dictator, terrifying behind a grim mask of gritted teeth and a blazing stare, a ticking time bomb of losing it and clamping down. Every character is intricately drawn and each would reward a detailed psychological study.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the play, aside from Adela hanging herself at the end after she mistakenly thinks her mother has gunned down the fleeing Pepe, is how all the women are complicit in their own damned destinies, mistaking the denial of their desires for pious devotion to duty. “A daughter who’s disobedient stops being a daughter and becomes an enemy,” says Bernarda and there you have it.
It’s a miasma of frustration and, in keeping with all good plays, it gets to the audience who, desperate for some - any! - light relief, finds itself laughing when La Poncia advises Adela to chill out over her hots for Pepe because she’s bound to marry him in the end – Angustias being older and sickly and likely to die in childbirth. Happy happy joy joy!
What the actors are up against, of course, is that central to the play’s impact is that it successfully emphasises that the family is trapped inside a tradition that has ruled down the ages. There are lots of mentions of genealogical details – skeletons hidden in closets and all that – and the spread of ages among the daughters - 39 to 20 - is important. The cast-being a youth theatre and hence age constricted cope well with this problem and are as convincing as they could reasonably be expected considering the circumstance. Quite an achievement.
Now and then the play’s a bit gauche – the sound of a stallion bucking in his stall heard from offstage is a trifle obvious as a metaphor for pent-up sexual urges and when news arrives that a young neighbour has given birth to a child out of wedlock and has murdered the infant to hide her shame, Bernarda repeatedly screaming “Kill her!” topples her condition into melodrama even as she’s unconsciously preparing us for the play’s dreadful climax.
As if the situation weren’t oppressive enough, director Mary King turns the final screw and tightens the tension by having the plot freeze every now and then for the cast to incrementally move the furniture in towards the centre of the stage, figuratively symbolising the daughters’ mental state, the walls closing in, decreasing the breathing space, increasing the claustrophobia.
The ending is sad and inevitable, Bernarda demanding the daughters don't weep over Adela’s death and insisting she died a virgin, reputation triumphing over reality, with the implied promise of an extended Luto riguroso, a life sentence, to come.
I can’t tell you what a relief it was to see the cast smiling when they took their richly deserved rapturous curtain call.
