The House of Bernada Alba
Production: The House of Bernada Alba
Venue: York Theatre Royal
Rating: **
The House of Bernarda Alba, translated from its original title, La casa de Bernarda Alba, was Spanish dramatist, Federico García Lorca’s last play.
Sinister and horribly ingrained in realism, it tells the story of five sisters trapped in their home under the tyrannical rule of their aged mother, Bernarda Alba. The play opens with the funeral of Bernarda’s second husband and Bernarda imposing an eight-year period of mourning in the household, during which she declares to both her daughters and the audience, “there’ll not be a breath of air from the street”.
Originally written in Spanish, the version currently playing at the York Theatre Royal is the new English version by David Hare. The script is what director Andy Love hails “one of the more vibrant and theatrical” English translations of the original text. The words are deliciously dark, haunting, and desperate, conveying Spanish drama in the English language perfectly. For instance, when Bernarda exclaims, “When a daughter disobeys she ceases to be a daughter; she becomes a kind of enemy”, the words deliver both the sardonic and the tyrannical need for honour together.
With such a rich play in hand, it is difficult to imagine anything being capable of ruining it. However, in choosing the wrong cast, the York Settlement Community Players have achieved just that.
Lorca subtitled this play as a drama of women in the villages of Spain. What was presented instead was a tedious, monotonous mesh of a play, interspersed with random screams and outcries that failed to inject energy into the production. To put it bluntly, basically, the acting was bad.
The performers did everything they were technically supposed to do. They smiled when they were pleased, they raised their voices when they were excited, they gritted their teeth and clenched their hands when they were upset. However, there was nothing more. All the actors had one tone of voice and one facial expression throughout the entire play. The acting was one-dimensional and this made the characters – originally fleshy with Lorca’s imagination and Hare’s translation – fall flat.
There was no character development whatsoever on the actors’ parts and Hare’s words lost the effect that they would have had with a stronger delivery. Ruth Ford as the title character Bernarda Alba, came across as a doddering old soul instead of a steely dictator. When hunchbacked daughter, Martirio, potentially soiled the family’s honour, Bernarda was supposed to hit her across her deformed back in anger. However, Ford barely touched Martirio’s back, raising the walking stick weakly and half-heartedly. All the tension, passion and cruelty that the scene promised failed to be realised. On the other hand, the scene became laughable and looked like a childish game.
The heated flamboyance, black passion and theatricality was sadly lost in this amateur production. The actors tried, but their attempts only became food for mockery. By the end of the play, it was thought the production could not get any worse. I was proven wrong when almost the entire stage threw me off my seat by bursting into carefully rehearsed and decidedly vocal wails and weeping at the death of one of the characters. I did not hesitate in walking out of the theatre. The play was good, but the production was not.
The House of Bernard Alba is showing at the York Theatre Royal until 28th February. Tickets: £10/12, Concessions, Under 25s and NUS are £5.
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Some of your ideas are good but your writing and grammar is appalling and completely lacking in style.
It’s obvious that english is not your first language but it is still important to make sure your own artistic ability is up to scratch before attempting to criticise other people’s.
Vicki
Vicki,
Surely the primary purpose of these comment boxes is to critique the production, not the critic? I find very little wrong with the language or grammar of this review – a few too many commas, perhaps, but nothing to suggest the writer’s English isn’t up to the task. If this is indeed their second language, there’s nothing ‘obvious’ about it.
As for ‘attempting to criticise’, what is quite obvious is that they do far more than this – they do criticise, directly and successfully. If you’re unhappy with them doing so, it begs the question of just what you expected from your theatre critic.
And finally, as you seem so keen to stay resolutely off the topic of the production in question and rely instead upon personal attack, do we really expect a valid and insightful dissection of the English Language from someone who spells Vicky with an ‘i’?