Theatre
Bernarda Alba
by Amanda Rivkin
Tuesday February 7, 2006
"Silencio! Mi hija muere virgen!" Bernarda Alba shouts in the final moments of García Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba, her voice wrenched with a longing to revise the past.
The Repertorio Español minimalist production of La casa de Bernarda Alba offers an emotional take on one of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s most accessible plays.
Bernarda Alba, the protagonist of Lorca’s modern tragedy, is the authoritarian matriarch who runs her household with the zeal of a convent’s Mother Superior and the disciplinarian flair of a prison guard. Actress Tatiana Vecino succeeds in conveying Bernarda’s consternation and determination to maintain full sovereignty over her house; which includes refusing to allow her daughters to leave.
Bernarda’s daughters are deathly afraid of ripples in the pond and the clanking of prison bars. Through the play’s two acts they shift visibly on stage from placating mother Bernarda’s concerns to the uncomfortable plotting of escapes.
Pepe Romano, the object of the young girls’ longing, captures the heart of Bernarda’s daughter, Angustias. Each time he appears by the window, the girls scuttle off stage to get a glimpse of him from the window.
The audience must take the girls’ word for what they see when confronted by Pepe Romano. As a prominent but invisible figure in La casa de Bernarda Alba, we at best understand Pepe Romano as transitory and, at worst, illusory.
Angustias is captivated by Pepe as their relationship foments. He offers her a pearl ring as an advance on their marriage vows. When Bernarda and Angustias’s sisters see the ring, they are adamant to the point of cruelty that she should have received a diamond one. Angustias is being taken for a ride by an insincere man, her sisters say.
The set is sparse: metal bars dangling upstage, clanking like steely wind chimes with each entrance and exit. Bernarda Alba’s daughters carry their weight in variations of the same simple costume: black scoop neck leotard tops, flowing graphite skirts, and crisp sateen sashes around the waist.
The effectiveness of René Buch’s production is found in the success of ensuring that each move on stage has a sound that can be heard and felt by the audience. The bars are the most prominent example, though there is the billowing of a white sheet at the beginning of a scene where Bernarda’s daughters gather to sew and gossip about Pepe Romano and their sister Angustias. The simple play of black, white, and shades of gray in the set and costume design work in the production’s favor.
If Buch’s production of La casa de Bernarda Alba lacked in any area, it was in its ability to downplay much of the melancholy that permeates most of García Lorca’s work. In fact, by playing up the emotional caliber of many of the scenes the audience, rather than being moved to the point of despair, shared its moments of tense laughter on a few occasions. Perhaps by allowing the emotional richness of the text to speak for itself, the actresses could relax a bit more on stage.
Nowhere is this truer than in the closing scene, where Bernarda is brought to lunacy over the prospect that her daughter Angustias might find love beyond the confines of her mother’s nest.
When Bernarda runs to and fro screaming in rage, "Dame la escopeta! (Bring me my shotgun!)" The audience was uncertain and considered for a moment whether Bernarda was overreacting or overreaching.
However, in a play imbued with as much emotion as La casa de Bernarda Alba, the most prominent danger is overplaying the play’s greatest asset. For much of the play, though, García Lorca’s words are left to their own devices and they linger as long as the opening words: Silencio! Silencio!
La casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca and directed by René Buch will be at the Repertorio Español (138 E. 27th St., between 3rd and Lexington) until March 16, 2006 on different nights at different times. Tickets $21. Contact the box office at 212.889.2850. More information available online at http://www.repertorioespanol.org. Performance in Spanish; strongly recommended for Intermediate Advanced Spanish students and above.
