The House of Bernarda Alba

by Federico Garcia Lorca

The House of Bernarda Alba had 4 performances almost 17 years ago (between the 9th of March 2007 and the 19th of May 2007) at The Leatherhead Theatre and Cecil Hepworth Playhouse

Garcia Lorca’s final play, completed shortly before his death in 1936, is subtitled “a drama about women in the villages of Spain”. Like Lorca’s other plays, it portrays a code of honour and its tragic consequences to Bernarda and her passionate daughters who are drawn to a man (Pepe) who is never seen but whose sexual attraction and presence infuses the play.

The five daughters of Bernarda Alba are kept under strict supervision, prevented from marrying because no suitable suitors appear who are of the right class. All the daughters suffer from repression but the youngest, Adela, rebels against it following the death of her father and her mother’s threat of eight years of mourning shut away in the house. Her actions lead to conflict amongst the daughters and eventually to tragedy.

Bernarda’s house is oppressive with stifling heat and the lustful desires and haunted by feelings of being watched, listened to and spied upon. The daughters fear their repressive mother and she is tense with suspicion and watchfulness.

With all its conflicts and repressions, the house is a mixture of a prison, convent and asylum. The daughters mourn their father’s death and the hopelessness of their own lives. Outside there is a regime of fierce male pride whilst inside the atmosphere of sexual frustration could be cut with a knife.

BACKGROUND OF THE PLAY The repression of women in Hispanic countries has a long tradition in Spain. Two separate religions – Catholicism and Islam – have contributed to this culture. A wife was seen as someone who ran the home and provided heirs. Single women were merely waiting to be wives, occupying themselves with housework and embroidery.

Equally rigid and stultifying was the Latin concept of honour and reputation. In 1930’s Spain to have a Good Name was everything and what people thought counted much more than the way you behaved or a moral code. In Spain the penal code of 1876 which allowed a husband to cleanse his honour with blood if a wife or daughter committed adultery was not repealed until 1963.

Two aspects of 1930s Spanish society combined to demand oBedience from women – the suffocating dominance of the Catholic Church and Fascism. To be an intellectual or a homosexual in Franco’s Spain was dangerous. Lorca was both. Two months after he finished the play (June 1936) Fascist thugs in black uniforms took him into an olive grove and shot him. The only performance of “The House of Bernarda Alba” he ever saw was in his imagination.

THE PLAY The play’s dramatic tension is born out of a clash of wills. The domineering will of the mother upheld by the forces of tradition, custom and social values and the invisible wills of the daughters pulled by their thirst for life and by their compulsive desires, instincts and needs.

The play maps the tragic downward path from mourning the death of a father to outright despair. The daughters are given a dreadful fate by their mother – eight years of mourning – at the start of the play. By the end this has been intensified by an ocean of mourning. The oldest daughter, Augustia’s chance of escaping the house has vanished and the other sisters are doomed to a fate far worse than the youngest sister’s (Adela) ultimate death.

A wonderfully dramatic and atmospheric play; a play of very strong emotions and conflicts, with nine excellent parts to challenge RDG actresses.

Person small1

Bernarda Alba - Gillian Smithies

(60) Obsessed by class superiority and good breeding, she would sacrifice each of her five daughters to preserve her family’s good name. With her iron dignity and some money she is a powerful force in the village. Ramrod rigid herself, she expects everyone to be the same. She is domineering, brutal and utterly self-certain with a cold smile that never leaves her face. She expects to command and to be obeyed. Everyone is expected to confirm with her suppression of the “undesirable”.

Person small1

Poncia - Jill Payne

(60) A peasant servant, whose down to earth common sense is at the core of Bernarda’s mad household. Poncia is the daughter of a woman who ended up in the whorehouse. After thirty years of being Bernarda’s servant, nurse and spy she knows most of her secrets and will do anything to stop them leaking out. Her loyalty is a matter of self-preservation to stop her ending up where her mother did. She is the one in the household who doesn’t belong – Bernarda’s informant but not her confidante. Poncia has all the cunning, envy, hypocrisy and resentment of a woman who serves another. She is as much a match for Bernarda as any woman could be and pushes things further with her than anyone else dares.

Person small1

Servant - Faith Powell

Like Poncia, one of the local peasants but without Poncia’s brains or abilities. She is a menial, working her fingers to the bone for scant reward. She is strong enough to be employed to act as the mad old granny’s gaoler and prevent her from escaping. There is a kind of class camaraderie between her and Poncia but there is no doubt who is boss.

Person small1

Maria Josefa - Jane Walters

(80) Bernarda’s mad old mother and a dire warning to the unmarried girls of their potential fate. She is locked out of sight of the local villagers and has the intermittent shrewdness of the insane. She delivers some accurate observations wrapped up in her other ramblings. Despite her advancing years she is remarkably crafty and physically strong. The raving mad head of a rebellious family.

Person small1

Angustias - Jan Tromans

(39) Is the only daughter of Bernarda’s first husband, who has died thirty years previously. A constant butt of her half-sisters, who are openly hostile to her. She is a lonely, sickly, slightly pathetic spinster, who has inherited money which gives her a chance to escape the house to marry Pepe, even though she knows he would prefer a prettier bride. Her sisters envy and resent her situation. In the end, Augustias is thwarted of her one chance of escape. The play is as much her tragedy as it is that of her youngest sister, Adela.

Person small1

Magdalena - Nancy Lund

(30) Should have been an heiress herself and is the only daughter her father loved. She has to swallow the bitter pill that her own father, who she loved, has left everything to his predecessor’s child, Augustius. Resentful and angry, she is somewhat cynical, defiant and sour-tongued but also sensitive, artistic, intelligent and beautiful.

Person small1

Amelia - Michelle Blake

(27) A still, placid centre at the heart of this dysfunctional family. She is the least troubled, most natural and contented of the sisters. She is closest to Martirio, constantly swapping village gossip. Emotionally, she is the most immature, squirming with embarrassment at the thought of being touched by a man.

Person small1

Martirio - Lisette Henry

(24) Has a hump back, poor health and is on medication. She is agonised and frustrated because she feels great love (or desire) for Pepe. Her mother has prevented her from marrying a previous suitor who had admired her. She can be acid tongued, bitter and cunning and may have some of the seeds of madness that flow from her locked-up grandmother.

Person small1

Adela - Charlotte Newton John

(20) The ardent, free-spirited youngest daughter, intolerably confined in the stifling house. With the birth of her desire for Pepe, she is utterly desperate to escape the unbearable confines of the house. Bernarda is closest to Adela and has brief moments of tenderness with her. But Adela has exuberance, exultation and ecstasy which none of the other sisters have. Adela’s transgressions with Pepe eventually bring about the tragedy of her death but they also bring her briefly but triumphantly to life.

Small1

Director - Judith Dolley

Person small1

Stage Manager - Liz Thomas

Small1

Set Design and Construction - John Godliman

Person small1

Lighting - Bill Payne

Small1

Sound - Mark Humble

Small1

Sound - Ian Santry

Small1

Movement - Carolyn Floyd

Festival Winners Elmbridge Drama Festival - 2007
Best All Women's Play Elmbridge Drama Festival - 2007
Best Director Judith Dolley Elmbridge Drama Festival - 2007
Best Supporting Player Lisette Henry Elmbridge Drama Festival - 2007
Technical Merit AETF South Division Final - Eastern Area - 2007
Winners Leatherhead Drama Festival - 2007