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.