Word: lorca
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...second Lorca play at the Loeb this season, The House of Bernarda Alba, is a stark drama polished down to essentials. It contains the essence of Lorca's dramatic technique, though poetry is much less prominent here than in Blood Wedding, which ran on the main stage earlier this fall. Happily, the North House production of Bernarda Alba preserves Lorca's restrained tone; it is a remarkably balanced production of consistent good quality...
...five children, remains a virgin: neither love nor motherhood has touched her heart. As a petty Spanish aristocrat, she is obsessed with the duty to maintain the honor of her House by holding her daughters to eight years of strict mourning for their father. But as often happens in Lorca, the Fates, working through human passions, have decreed tragedy. The House which Bernarda must keep unstained (alba) is marked for ruin...
...Since Lorca's play is written for an all-female cast, we never see Pepe, the handsome suitor who drives the play to its bloody conclusion. He asks the hand of Angustias, the eldest and richest daughter, a shriveled 39-year-old spinster. At the same time, he carries on an affair with Adela, the youngest Alba daughter and the only beauty in the family. Another sister, the hunchback Martirio, is also in love with Pepe. The rest can be left to the imagination of the reader...
Gilian Shallcross admirably brings out the envy and despair of the unappealing Angustias. Pat Collinge as Martirio controls a part that could easily be overplayed, and Anne Crawford and Mary Lambert do a commendable job of defining two other sisters whose characters Lorca left somewhat vague. Saralaine Evans, unfortunately, has some difficulty with the role of Adela. She moves stiffly and occasionally declaims in a monotonous, over-dramatic voice in a way that never lets one forget she's acting...
...village. They wear good costumes there, thanks to Barbara Channing, and the two musicians play a good guitar. Paul Sapounakis' set, an ingenious arrangement of vaguely Iberian arches, would (if they were closer to me) surround the play well enough--even though it has nothing to do with Lorca's instructions. Still, it is only in the last act, when Eric Regener's music throws dread, mystery, and the Moon out on stage, that Blood Wedding really begins...