MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION: Bento and deGannes.
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It was political oppression that finally put an end to Federico Garcia Lorca, but the homosexual poet was well aware that sexual repression was as consequential a danger in the provincial Spain of his 1936 play The House of Bernarda Alba. Lorca was murdered by Franco’s fascists not long after writing this cautionary tale, which is being staged at Providence Black Repertory Company (through June 11).
There are problems with this production, from a lack of age-appropriate casting that obscures portrayals to a dramatic arc that plateaus early and stays stuck there. But the outlines of Lorca’s foreboding morality play show through like the Grim Reaper in silhouette.All takes place in one day, after black-clad family members parade home from the funeral of the deceased patriarch of the house. Now matriarch by virtue of survival, Bernarda (Cilla Julia Bento) is as ready to take charge as a lioness suddenly uncaged. The victims of her maternal marching orders are her five daughters, obliged to dutifully obey her every demand uncomplainingly. The way that’s heading is demonstrated by the mad woman locked up in the house, Bernarda’s howlingly insane 80-year-old mother who occasionally breaks free to complain that, in effect, she needs to bed a man.
The daughters range in age from the youngest and most irrepressible, Adela (Nehassaiu deGannes), to at 39 the oldest and thereby the one who must first marry, Angustias (Zandra Bennett). We learn that Magdalena (Stephanie Burlington) is the only one of them that their father ever loved. We see that the lame and supposedly ugly Martirio (Elizabeth Keiser) is the most embittered, declaring that women would be better off never laying eyes on men, who are interested only in having “land, oxen, and a meek little dog to cook for them.” Amelia (Charlie Ek) is the most naïve.
If the pressures within the house are explosive, outside they are crushing. As Magdalena observes, “We rot away inside for what people will say.” While men tom-catting around is accepted as nature’s way (if not God’s), and word of a lusty woman sneaking off at night elicits a begrudging smile even from the prudish Bernarda, brazen sexuality can outrage the town enough to get a woman killed.
Speaking of gods, no man ever appears in this play, but their presence looms in the imaginations of these fantasy-wracked women, sexual tension stretching each to her snapping point. The main man of their concerns is Pepe “el Romano,” whom Bernarda allows to court Angustias through her barred bedroom window. Of course, others in the household are also interested in him.
As Bernarda, Bento usually strikes the right balance of self-righteousness and recognizable human weakness to be convincing. The role that gets much better lines is that of the cynical servant Poncia (Linda Monchik), growling such observations about men as that “15 days after the wedding he leaves the bed for the table, then the table for the tavern.” The actor who gets to have the most fun is Cecily Mercedes Torres, manipulating or inhabiting puppets designed by Jeremy Wood¬ward, such as Bernarda’s madwoman mother, eyeballs on bobbling stalks and the actor’s shrouded head for a hump.
