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by Federico García Lorca, directed by Tadeusz Bradecki

Shaw Festival, Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

July 4-October 5, 2002

"House on Fire"

The women are to be locked inside the house for a period of eight years as a sign of mourning for the death of their father.  When a woman in the village has a child out of wedlock and its body is found by dogs, the villagers take her out into the streets where they torture and kill her.  When a woman marries she may speak to her husband only when spoken to and look at him only when he looks at her.  Is this Afghanistan or Pakistan?  No, it is Spain in the early 20th century and the subject of "The House of Bernarda Alba" now playing in a superb production at the Shaw Festival.  Yet the knowledge that women are still subjugated in many parts of the world in the 21st century gives this play relevance beyond the Andalusia that playwright García Lorca portrays

In this, the Shaw's first venture into Spanish repertoire, Bernarda Alba returns to her house after the funeral for her husband.  She has five daughters, one the daughter of her husband's first wife and the only one to have her own money.  Bernarda's hatred of men has impelled her make sure none of her daughters has contact with any man, much less marry.  Now she imposes on them the same eight-year period of mourning that her mother imposed on her.  Having rank without wealth she seeks to preserve her family's honour at the cost of stifling her daughters' lives.  To maintain order and to fulfill what she sees as her duty, she the matriarch paradoxically imposes the rules of a patriarchal system on her daughters and a hierarchical system on her two female servants.  Nevertheless, as the frequent images of lightning and flash floods emphasize, no human system can control the outbursts of nature. 

Lorca's is one of the many attempts to re-create tragedy in the 20th century, here by substituting a traditional values system for the will of the gods.  Lorca, a Republican, was executed at age 38 by fascists on the rise in Spain.  It is not difficult to see in Bernarda's tyranny over her daughters and her daughter's Adela's rebellion against it a parable of the futility of any repressive system, political or otherwise, that seeks absolute control.

The play requires a cast of 15 women.  It is hard to imagine any other theatre company in Canada but the Shaw that has the wealth of acting talent at hand to mount this play.  Nora McLellan is magnificent as Bernard Alba.  Her Bernarda has an imperious façade built of pride and hatred.  Gradually, as the strife among her daughters becomes ever more intense and it begins to crumble, we see her rebuild it again and again with increasing effort until at the end all supports fall away.  Yet, while McLellan's tyrant seems to make the room turn cold whenever she enters, she suggests all the complexities of background and circumstance that show Bernarda herself as a victim of the very system she imposes on others. 

No less marvellous is Patricia Hamilton as La Poncia, Bernarda's longtime servant who knows her mistress better than her mistress does and who has enough cause to care for her as despise her.  Like McLellan, Hamilton  revels in the complexity of a character who can veer from good humour to invective to concern to self-control within minutes.  Their complex interplay makes their scenes together the highlights of the play.

All the other roles are well cast.  As in last year's "Picnic",  Fiona Byrne plays a young woman, Adela, whose sexual awareness rebels against the restrictions placed on her.  But here where the restrictions are harsher, her rebellion is more violent.  Byrne makes us see the longing for the freedom of outside world that men represent (even though Lorca poprtrays marriage as another prison).  Adela's insistence on destroying her sister's happiness gives Byrne a rare chance to show how well she can play meanness born of desperation.        

For Susie Burnett, Martirio, the daughter with scoliosis, is a breakthrough role.  Martirio is perhaps the most complex of the daughters.  Wracked with envy of the fairer Adela, in love with the same man who loves Adela, inhibited by her disability yet hoping to triumph over it, Martirio, as Burnett plays her, is seething with contradictory emotions ready to erupt at any time.  It is a powerful and disturbing performance.

Lynne Cormack is excellent as Angustias, the only daughter with an inheritance and the only one (given men's greed) with a suitor.  Cormack perfectly captures Angustias' physical and mental frailty, the tenuousness of her hope, her inability to believe her "fiancé" may really love Adela.  Helen Taylor plays Magdalena, the daughter poised between defiance and obedience, and Jane Perry is Amelia, the daughter only partly aware of the disaster toward which the family is tumbling.

Jillian Cook is truly frightening as María Josefa, Bernarda's mad, aged mother whom, like the past, Bernarda tries unsuccessfully to keep locked away.  Like O'Neill's Mary Tyrone she is a kind of living ghost, a portent of the loveless, lonely lives that await all the women of the play.  Brigitte Robinson's decrepit Prudencia shows that women outside Bernarda's walls also suffer, while Patti Jamieson's Maid shows a lively freedom of thought denied her upper-class contemporaries.        

  

Polish director Tadeusz Bradecki has become the Shaw's expert in European masterpieces.  He directs with great attention to detail particularly ensuring clearly differentiated responses from the five daughters.  The first two acts played together build inexorably in power and while Act 3 does begin with a lull, the tension would be just that much greater if he had not permitted an intermission after Act 2.  After all, the show is only two hours long.  The only problem with Richard Sanger's new translation is that occasionally it provokes unintentional humour at inopportune moments.  The cast maintains its concentration through these moments but it would be better if Bradecki could somehow have minimized them or, better still, if Sanger could have rephrased the passages.    

Designer Teresa Pzybylski represents Bernarda's house with a stony grey dais on the Court House stage separated from the first row by a narrow trench to emphasize its isolation.  A functioning well downstage centre makes palpable Lorca's frequent images of water in the midst of barrenness.  Kevin Lamotte has captured the quality of light in southern Spain with amazing accuracy.  

"Bernarda Alba" is one of the great dramatic works of the previous century, simple in structure but rich in meaning.  The necessity of a strong all-female cast means it is not often produced professionally.   A production as powerful as this one at the Shaw demands to be seen.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Nora McLellan. ©2002 Shaw Festival.