Theatre
The House of Bernarda Alba (Lyric, Hammersmith)
Spanish excellence
Christopher Edwards
During the early days of the Spanish Civil War, Federico Garcia Lorca, who had taken part in a demonstration in support of the Popular Front, was arrested at Granada by the fascist forces. He was then shot, He was 38 years old and had been a champion of the Spanish avant- garde, along with Bunuel and Salvador Dali — names far more celebrated now than Lorca's.
How is it that Lorca has excited so little enthusiasm in this country? Apart from his greatness as a dramatist surely his homosexuality and his socialist politics ought to have made him an almost obliga- tory object of interest at least in certain quarters of the subsidised theatre. In his plays he raises a highly persuasive voice against traditionalist forces in Spanish soci- ety, especially the Catholic Church. And apart from his work in the theatre his poetry too is highly esteemed — although again not widely in this country. Now, in this compelling production at the Lyric, Hammersmith, directed by the celebrated Spanish classical actress Nuria Espert, we have a chance to see what we have been missing.
Although intensely Spanish and located in a national tradition that includes Lope de Vega and Calderon, Lorca's themes — it might be more accurate to call them obsessions — sound instantly in the north- ern European tradition as well. His drama, with its focal points of passion, honour and blood, also enacts fundamental human conflicts that transcend the purely local Spanish context. As has been well re- marked, if anyone doubts this they should go from Strindberg's Lady Julie to Blood Wedding, or from Ibsen's Ghosts to this work at the Lyric. And if the climax of The House of Bernardo Alba seems melo- dramatic (and it is melodramatic) then this too is a limitation we have become used to — certainly in Ibsen's work.
The plot of the play came to Lorca, curiously enough, as he was hiding down a well outside Granada. He had gone down there in order to spy upon an old widow who exercised tyrannical control over her several unmarried daughters. Despite the baking sunshine overhead, Lorca reports, the world inhabited by these silent, sha- dowy women, dressed always in black, was as cold and lifeless as the tomb. And this is the world he recreates so memorably in this play.
Lorca described the piece as a 'photo- graphic document . . . a drama about women in the villages of Spain'. It certainly strikes us as a triumphantly naturalistic version of what he must have seen from his spy-hole down the well. Glenda Jackson plays the role of Bernarda, a matriarch who does not flinch from striking her daughters to keep them under her iron will. Miss Jackson projects a sort of fossil- ised or unnatural figure of motherhood where fecundity and affection have been replaced by barren social conformity. She is, in fact, class-ridden and opposed to any form of instinctual life. She has five daugh- ters, from 20 to 39 years of age, and all of them betray a defeated, spinsterish spirit save for the youngest, Adela. She teems with sensual instinct and the drama flows from a conflict between Bernarda, Adela and two other daughters who jealously want what Adela manages to secure. For the father of the family has just died and money has come to the eldest girl, Angus- tias, who is promptly proposed to by a handsome young man (whom we never see). But it is the pretty young Adela (Amanda Root) whom he desires and at the climax the mother shoots at his shadow in the night after an illicit midnight tryst in the stable. Adela, thinking her lover killed, takes her own life.
The power of the production springs from several sources. Not least there is a superbly suggestive set by Ezio Frigerio — a white, baking cauldron of a courtyard under whose sheer, peeling walls the daughters appear more and more to resem- ble scurrying black inmates deprived of fresh air. Against the prevailing tones of black and white Adela flounces on in a riotously flamboyant green flamenco dress and leaps onto a table. Such is the claus- trophobia generated by the production that this small gesture really does strike us as rebellious and extravagant.
There is also a likely and highly speak- able translation by Robert David Mac- donald — quite the best English text of the play we have come across. The cast, too, is especially strong, including Joan Plowright as Poncia, Bernarda's worldly peasant ser- vant, and Patricia Hayes as Bemarda's demented 80-year-old mother whose sole wish — a symbolic parallel of Adela's behaviour — is to return to her village on the coast to get married again.
One criticism of the production is its failure adequately to distinguish between the characters' class — a point central to Lorca's political intentions. Bernarda and her daughters do not sound much different from Joan Plowright's earthy but rather plummy peasant, Poncia (and Adela sounds altogether more common than even the beggar woman, which is a pity). But these are minor blemishes bearing in mind the overall achievement of the production. Here is a rare chance to see a distinguished staging of a little-known European classic.
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