The House of Bernarda Alba

18/09/2009

East End gang matriarchal reimagining @ Citizens, Glasgow

THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
3/5

“Let’s reset Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba among the gangsters of the contemporary East End of Glasgow.” Goodness knows how the National Theatre of Scotland, adapter Rona Munro and director John Tiffany came up with this one. It’s the kind of idea which might have emerged at the end of a long night, as the drink ran dry. Not since Malachi Bogdanov transplanted Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to outer space (for the now defunct English Shakespeare Company in 2000) has such a damaging concept been forced upon a classic drama.
Lorca’s great play does not lend itself easily to Munro’s reinvention. In the original, Bernarda Alba is the recently bereaved widow of a wealthy Spanish landowner. A bleak and unforgiving Catholic matriarch, she imprisons her five daughters behind walls built of oppressive, conservative tradition and reactionary class prejudice. Written in 1936 (the year in which the Spanish Civil War began, and the year in which Lorca – who was gay and a leftist – was murdered by fascists), the piece is a resonating reflection on centuries of religious repression in Spain and a heart-breaking premonition of the Franco dictatorship to come.
In Munro’s less-than-subtle version, Bernarda becomes Bernie (or Bernadette) Alba, wife of recently slain gangster, and strip club owner, Tony Alba. Gone is the oft-mentioned, but never seen, Pepe el Romano (the young man the Alba girls lust after), replaced by eastern European gangster’s son Peter Romanov. As the pink neon sign, reading “El Paso”, flickers above the ostentatious living room of the Alba family home and the Glaswegian vernacular kicks in, the play emerges as a mangled car crash involving Lorca’s beautiful drama, an episode of The Sopranos and last night’s screening of River City.
Although almost everything Munro brings to the play diminishes it, and little she has added enhances it, Tiffany and his talented, all-female cast still contrive, somehow, to draw out some of the essence – the powerful sexual tension, the shattering rage against repression – of Lorca’s tragedy. Siobhan Redmond, in particular, has the steely determination and self-control of a real Bernarda. Young Vanessa Johnson, as Adie (Munro’s reimagining of Bernarda’s youngest daughter, Adela) is a revelation, bringing a brilliant combination of innocence and irrepressible passion to the role. One only wishes one could see her illuminate a production of Lorca’s wonderful original play.

At the Citizens until October 3, then touring until November 7. www.nationaltheatrescotland.com

ADAM RAMSAY