THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA
The first sign is Bernarda’s five mourning daughters scattered throughout the theater like living sculptures. The second is in the program, which provides neither a cast of characters nor the actors who play them, but insists you should experience the play as you would a film. New Age has never heard of opening credits? Instead of a list, you find a long-winded, masturbatory explanation of Garcia Lorca’s intentions by the play’s director, Rolando Arroyo-Sucre.
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As it turns out, this production of Bernarda Alba has little to do with the quiet tensions of sculpture or mime, less to do with the fluidity or accessibility of film, and much to do with Arroyo-Sucre’s ego. This guy does it all–direction, costume, scene, and lighting design, as well as two drawings for the program. In his Bernarda Alba there are flickers of good ideas, but they seldom relate to each other. More often, there are just plain bad ideas imposed on the production by Arroyo-Sucre’s solipsistic reasoning.
There are occasional lights, particularly Lisa M. Duncan’s Magdalena, and in general, the multiethnic casting is a nice touch. But more often than not, Arroyo-Sucre has given these women annoying and somewhat cliched instructions: everybody lifts their glasses simultaneously at dinner; the servant Poncia is spread-legged every time she sits for no apparent reason, and there’s no good reason for her nasal whine; and the servant’s arms are often akimbo–not with her hands on her hips, but in an unnatural open-palm fashion on her upper buttocks.
