Stifled desire
Lloyd Evans
The House of Bernarda Alba Lyttelton Wilde Tales Southwark Playhouse Poor Beck Soho What a gorgeous place to live. That’s your first reaction to The House of Bernarda Alba. As I took my seat in the Lyttelton, the uncurtained stage revealed a domestic setting of ethereal beauty. An opulent Moorish courtyard at dusk, vibrantly serene, mysteriously abandoned. Shuttered doors, dramatic stained glass, a receding arrangement of arched pillars bathed in quivering golden light. Undeniably lovely, and almost certainly a disaster. If the scenery bids to outdo the play, the show’s bound to be a flop. The action began. Suddenly it was early morning. Two black-clad drudges came pottering on stage. Fresh cool lighting transformed the set. No more opulence or majestic serenity. This was a crumbling and oppressive wreck. The stately pillars were caked in grease, the stained glass was cracked and smashed, the shuttered doors hung off their hinges. A masterstroke. One single deft lighting change had revealed the play’s central theme: luxury masking despair. My prejudices had been teased out and played like a musical instrument to sound the drama’s opening chords. A brilliant surprise, perfectly in keeping with every element in this riveting production.
Lorca’s world is torrid and relentlessly cruel. Penelope Wilton plays Bernarda Alba, a crazed Catholic widow who keeps her five unmarried daughters caged up in their rotting provincial mansion. She prowls the courtyard maintaining order, lashing the restive virgins with her vicious tongue, or, when words fail her, with a thick wooden pole. Even 39-year-old Angustias, the horsey geek who will inherit the estate, gets clobbered across the shins for glancing at a boy during Mass. The boy is Pepe Romano, a dashing young farmer who captures all the girls’ hearts. Up in the attic, meanwhile, Bernarda Alba has an even nastier relative locked away. Her own mother. I longed to see more of Cherry Morris’s insane cackling gran, who escapes twice and rushes around boasting of her good looks and imminent betrothal. She is bundled off and dumped back upstairs in the isolation unit. When the desperate Angustias receives a formal proposal, her sisters react with furious jealousy. None more so than Adela, the youngest, who has found a way of evading the nightly curfew and who plans to have Pepe for herself. Pretty soon the pious family has turned into a coven of hellcats tearing each other to pieces.
The ensemble playing is beautifully harmonised. Every performance earns its place. Katherine Manners and Justine Mitchell are quietly outstanding as Amelia and Magdalena. Deborah Findlay’s sardonic housekeeper is a voice of sanity in a world driven mad by stifled desire.
The production has been criticised for having two intervals. Judge for yourself. The climaxes are as shocking and powerful as anything the theatre has yet produced and I needed a stiff drink after both actbreaks. At moments Lorca approaches the heights of Chekhov or Ibsen, and he makes his near contemporary Pirandello sound like a pretentious chatterbox. The author was murdered by fascists a few months after finishing the script. He never saw his own play. Now’s your chance.
I wish I could be as enthusiastic about Wilde Tales at the Southwark Playhouse. This is one of the South Bank’s hidden treasures and I arrived early to enjoy a glass of their highly drinkable red. Tortuous ululations emanated from the dressing-room. The warm-up. Young actors feel the need to flex their vocal chords before a show. Older actors don’t bother; they just discuss the critics. This is an energetic show, a medley of Oscar Wilde short stories dramatised for the stage, but it felt like an extended audition piece. The players minced about in pyjamas pretending to be various beasts and birds. Who ever said that an actor impersonating a heron actually looks like a heron? The only animal an actor can reliably personify is a human being, and even that can be a struggle. I felt I was being bullied rather than entertained, and I kept my eye on the kids in the audience, most of whom seemed too stunned to move. Afterwards I overheard two pipsqueaks advising their parents they’d loved it. But kids don’t pay for the tickets and they’ll say anything to get out of the house. A lot of children’s theatre is predicated on this calculation.
Poor Beck has the hallmark of a horrific night out. The author, Joanna Laurens, has attempted to forge a new type of poetry from colloquial speech. Oh my God! Fetch the straitjacket! But she nearly succeeds. The result is beautiful and rather moving. I can’t wait for her next play.
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