Melbourne Theatre Company presents
The House of Bernarda Alba
Adapted by Patricia Cornelius
After Frederico Garcia Lorca
Director – Leticia Caceres
Set and Costume Designer – Marg Horwell
Lighting Designer – Rachel Burke
Composer - Irene Vela
Sound Designer – Jethro Woodward
Stage Manager – Jess Keepence
Cast
Marti – Candy Bowers,
Angela – Peta Brady
Penelope – Julie Forsyth
Magda – Bessie Holland
Maria – Sue Jones
Bernadette – Melita Jurisic
Adele - Emily Milledge
Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio
25 May – 7 July 2018
Adapting this work to a contemporary Australian
environment is brave and ambitious. The
result is a challenging, absorbing and resonant offering - though not without
dissonance.
Poet Frederico Garcia Lorca’s classic play The House of Bernarda Alba set in rural
Spain of the 1930s is adapted for the Australian stage by Patricia Cornelius as
commissioned by Melbourne Theatre Company and director, then Associate Artistic
Director, Leticia Caceres.
Cornelius sets her version in Western Australia;
one assumes the Pilbara, with all this implies.
This is not an austere stylized piece of Museum Theatre but a vital,
robust, demanding, entertaining and at times amusing work.
Although the narrative runs along Lorca’s
original trajectory the perspective is altered by the contemporary
setting. Here the grieving wife of a deceased
mining mogul, bails her four daughters up in the family home for eight
untenable weeks of mourning, as opposed to eight years.
Cornelius’s Bernarda, Bernadette (Melita
Jurisic), unflinchingly with passionless brutality demands complete control of
her empire. She will not tolerate
insurgence. The result is acutely
relatable to, and very thorny - though not without incongruities and
inconsistencies. Often, it is these rifts
that generate shifts in interpretation and elucidate more complex
understandings of the violence of the repressive oppression we are witnessing.
The set, by Marg Horwell, suggests
breezeways that are open to the elements of the vast ancient landscape beyond. Sound by Jethro Woodward enhances the
environment and brings connection to the exterior world. And Musical Composition by Irene Vela
augments, with the impressive functionality of, assisting the forward motion of
the story.
A lengthy hour and forty-five minutes
passes remarkably quickly.
A contemporary casting, in that the mix of
contrasting physicality, further amplifies the individuality of the feisty
albeit suppressed women that are Bernadette’s daughters. This amalgam of inspired performers that don’t
completely match is indicative of large family of strong and unique individuals.
Peta Brady plays the eldest daughter,
Angela. With a small tense body she
physicalizes Angela’s vulnerability and sensitivity to having her self-esteem
wracked by circumstances and the mercilessness of her mother. And then, visa versa, she responds to
flattery and support by, tangibly, opening out and gaining physical status.
Marti the middle child played by Candy
Bowers appears more padded by siblings on either side and less at immediate
risk of her mother’s ire and more of a conduit for the wellbeing of her sisters. The glowing Magda (Bessie Holland) carries a
secret of epic proportions that engenders hope but horrifies her mother. Sue Jones as the failing, victimized
grandmother Maria releases some of the oppressive tension with her marvelously
realized senile seer.
Emily Milledge fashions the youngest and
most defiant daughter Adele with a dangerous soupcon of shamelessness.
As cold-blooded matriarch Bernadette,
Jurisic, conveys a woman with a life underpinned by fear and ambivalence. She is determined that her household will
remain respectable. But her brand of respectability lacks heart or compassion. She has an inflated sense of her own
importance that begets isolation. Respectability
demands repression. No one is safe in
this environment where deception lurks everywhere because too much is
suppressed. Ironically forcing her
daughters to deny their carnal natures backfires horribly within and without
the house.
Julie Forsyth with her impeccable comic
timing opens proceedings and sets the scene as a kind or chorus commenting on
the funeral with liberal dashing of lurid lascivious gluttony. She shines throughout.
In the ‘land of plenty’ where this family
lives - arrogance, greed and dominion assures there is not enough ‘to go around.’
Suzanne Sandow
(For Stage Whispers)
