The House of Bernarda Alba, June 2007

The House of Bernarda Alba
Manhattan Theater Source
Reviewed by Matthew Barbot
Sunday, June 17, 2007

Manhattan Theater Source’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba does what its characters cannot. Deep and boiling with intensity, it breaks down the walls and soars beyond them.

The cast of the production is excellent, and holds the promise of getting even better. Bernarda Alba is a play whose beauty is what’s between the lines. It’s about secrets, lies, hypocrisy, jealousy, insecurity and hidden truths, and the actresses populating the Theater Source’s playing space are spot on. The daughters, who are sometimes hard to distinguish when merely reading the play, each come alive, deep, well rounded, and fully realized. Joy Franz, as the titular mother, is absolutely perfect in the role from the moment she thunders on stage to her final cry of “Silencio!” The strength of the cast is that they manage to imbue every moment with layers upon layers of subtext; each line, each action, each furtive gaze is silently boiling with hidden meanings and agendas. No one can trust anyone else, and no one really likes anyone else, and each one’s reasons are more complicated than even they themselves know. It’s a credit to the cast and to Kathleen O’Neill’s wonderful direction that this production is able to maintain – without an intermission – a constant state of underlying tension and foreboding that manages to be subtle even while balancing at the breaking point. Nowhere is this clearer than in a scene where Bernarda, her daughters, and a friend of the family sit together at a table for a snack. In this production, the scene begins, not with the friend’s line, but with a long, sustained period of silence. The women merely eat, drink, and sit there, but rather than get bored the audience remains rapt, holding its breath, wishing someone would say anything to break the awful quiet brought on by the characters’ unspoken disdain for one another. It’s a beautiful piece of theater.

The Manhattan Theater Source has put together a great rendition of this classic play. It’s a must-see, if only for Franz’s excellent performance. The production seems larger than the Theater Source’s tiny space, but there’s something alluring about doing this play in such an intimate setting. The audience is right there within Bernarda’s house (represented with a beautiful set) and we are forced to live with her, face to face, and witness the drama as if the next one the daughters will turn on might be any of us.