Poets and the Great War

The Almeida production of The Dark Earth and The Light Sky is a rarity.  Nick Dear's play traces the last seven years of the poet Edward Thomas. We see his troubled marriage, compulsive walking and friendship with Robert Frost, who turns him to poetry. We are shown Eleanor Farjeon's adoration of him and the two rich years of productivity before his death in World War I from a shell blast at Arras in 1917.  By all rights it shouldn't be particularly dramatic, especially in the way it's written.  It combines monologues that directly address the audience with vignettes of the poet's life which seems almost entirely comprised of depression and long walks in the country.  But the quality of the writing, acting, and directorial image take real characters - now long dead - and introduce them to the audience anew, making the production fresh and utterly absorbing.

The story is undoubtedly tragic.  Bob Crowley's design evokes both the barren wasteland of the trenches of WWI and the rich soil of England's countryside.  It easily transitions to so many different locations.  In one scene, Helen Thomas actually digs potatoes out of it.  In another, a bomb explodes casting dirt in every direction.  Peter Mumford's lights are simply beautiful.  The rich ambers and purples create beautiful days and sharp spots delineate the reflective monologues, separating them from the narrative in a way that makes you feel like you're sitting alone in a room with the figures portrayed. The country sky is brought to life in all it's varieties with little pins of light creating stars and clouds actually seeming to move across the backdrop.  John Leonard sound design evokes equally and perfectly birdsong and the sounds of war.

The casting here is perfect.  The characters are utterly and painfully believable.  They capture the little dramas of an unhappy marriage and the loss of a friend so dear they seem to have been fated to know you.  Richard Eyre's directorial image fosters this approach to the story and supports the drama of the relationships of a set of average people who happened to be famous as well.  The portrayals are really beautiful.

The House of Bernarda Alba

I’m not usually one for reimaginings, but I thought the Almeida’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba set in modern-ish day Iran was really well chosen and well done.  The play was written on the eve of Franco’s rise to power in Spain and so tyranny and totalitarianism play prominent roles in the production.  It centers on the actions of Bernarda Alba after the death of her husband, specifically the fact that she locks her five daughters and herself within her house for 8 years of mourning.  This house is not a home; it is conjured within the environment of the play as a fortress or a coffin.  Bernarda summons its different elements as a means of reinforcing its boundaries: the unseen love interest of the girls meets his sweethearts through their windows; men and women are separated (men in the yard, women in the house); and the neighbors watch each other without mercy between the shutters.  The women inside the house are connected to the outside world only by gossip and the excellent sound design of Dan Jones.  And I feel so much sympathy for them.  I too live with Bernarda Alba.

Visually too, the play’s palette of black and white may serve to evoke the color scheme of a black and white photograph.  Bernarda insists on everything being scrubbed spotless, yet only wears black.  Her morality too is black and white.  She endorses and upholds a society she condemns as keeping her daughters from enjoying their rightful place in the world.  Bernarda believes herself to be a high-born woman.  Whether this is actually the case is left up to the audience; but, in either case, Bernarda believes her daughters have been cheated out of their rightful place. But this play is built on the premise of negation.  Bernarda’s opening and closing line is “Silence” and she imposes on her daughters a regime of denial.  This is the story, ultimately, of a dynasty, only here Clytemnestra has been conceived as a 60-year-old matriarch for whom social control is inextricably bound up with religious display.  The play was conceived as a statement on tyranny and it wholly succeeds, evoking not only the beginnings of Franco’s Spain but also the conditions against which the protesters of the Arab Spring rebelled.