The Almeida Theater in Angel (London) is showing this days The House of Bernarda Alba, directed by Bijan Sheibani, in a new version of Emily Mann. The possibilities that the set, the plot and the characters created by Lorca bring up are rich and profound. Not in vain, characters from this play -as well as the august and grotesque and genial Valle Inclan's Max Estrella- are used in workshops in Spain to learn techniques in developing acting characters. The location of the house and the play in today's Iran I find interesting; also, the mix of accents -although, I lost quite a lot, being myself, unfortunately, hard of understanding sometimes-. There was a mild touch of anachronism, perhaps (i.e. the detail of the vacuum cleaner at the beginning), and a touch of surrealism that I saw in the figure of the crazy mother, probably from the time the play was written (1936): all aspirations and dreams of the house are kept locked in the head of a demented, old woman, and sometimes escape at night.
The production lacks intensity at several moments and, I believe the figure of Bernarda was quite soft and ill-built; I had the impression that the actress was in love with her own voice. Most surprising to me was the timid laughing out-bursts that the audience was keenly provoking during the play. Why? Why was so?... It is a bad indication when a drama of the magnitude of The House falls into the laughs of the public, but perhaps, it is in the intention of the public to make something different out of it. It is interesting. Jokes and occurrences, nevertheless, never lead to laugh in a drama but only, perhaps, to sad, sad, tender smiles.
I had the vague sensation during the play of being gravitating in an Universe of blurred time coordinates, which is nice. This Universe, however, was secured and pillared by the modernity of death and pain _always there, like the light of sun, now and then, and tomorrow; also, the everlasting yearnings of humans for happiness; and the constant claw of hopelessness, squeezing tight.
Indeed, the house of Bernarda Alba is a nest of unhappiness -a house full of "women without men"-, covered with dust, the dust of the burning dessert next door. However, men do not seem to make things better. Bernarda herself has been married twice and she is not doing well: a tragic, crippled, dark and spoiled figure, an authoritarian and chocking fist upon the fate of the rest, feared and hated as much as Tiberium. Men come and go -"sigh, no more, ladies, sigh no more: men are deceivers ever", is sung in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing-, and come because attracted to money or to the juicy fruit of a 20 year-old rose. This is a hard world for women, and even death is unfair to them, as men live less, and the honor of a woman never let her rest in peace. The marriages of Bernarda have also brought discord to the house in the opposition between Angustias and Adela, the oldest and the youngest daughters, having different fathers and ruined by the same man. All attempts to escape reality are chocked and the house has its gates opened to hopelessness.
But Lorca provides an exit: death.
**
The world of the characters of Vargas Llosa (i.e. La Ciudad y los Perros, Conversacion en la Catedral) is much hopeless and dark as the house of Bernarda Alba. But Llosa does not let them escape; the people in his stories hardly killed themselves, hardly complaint about their fate, hardly gather together around a sewing table to reflect on their state. They are puppets always shook in motion and struggling for survival, animals caged by their instints. The sky is low and gray, no one sees higher inspirations, no one spot room for virtue. The Universe is a narrow slot through which creatures crawled blind-folded, betrayed once and again and again over their petty, low and unimportant affairs. Llosa shows his characters dragged in the dust from before they are born and let them die slowly and inadvertently without a ray of sun, without a hope.
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