Tyrannical and imperious, Bernarda Alba rules her five daughters with an iron-fisted vehemence in Actors Bridge Ensemble and Belmont University Theatre’s presentation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, which marks the return to the stage of Vali Forrister, Actors Bridge producing artistic director, after a far too long six-year absence.
Directed by Jessika Malone, Lorca’s masterpiece is the latest collaborative effort from Actors Bridge and Belmont University Theatre, which afford students the opportunity to work alongside professional actors, honing their craft while presenting compelling theater for a discerning audience.
Written in 1936—only months before the playwright was killed by fascists during the Spanish Civil War—The House of Bernarda Alba is theater at its most riveting, relating a tale of repression and oppression as the apparently omniscient Bernarda rides roughshod over her unmarried daughters, ruling their lives with barely suppressed disdain and unbridled rage. Set in an Andalusian village—in which class and social standing are predetermined by centuries of sexist, patriarchal tradition—Bernarda rails against her daughters, brandishing her walking stick, or sometimes even a horsewhip, to drive home her point (that they are her chattel through whom she will gain more wealth and prestige) and to retain complete and total control of what transpires within the walls of her house.
Forrister takes on the challenging role with a resolute confidence, commanding the stage with her tightly coiled rage, gleefully exacting her revenge at her place in male-dominated society by railing against her daughters (and her aged mother, whom she keeps locked in an upstairs room) first, the poor people of the village second, and at the vagaries of life in general third.
Forrister approaches the role much as you would expect: She’s studied and controlled, yet simmering barely beneath the surface is a horrifyingly repellant nature that breathes fire into Bernarda’s heart while maintaining the frigid temperatures of her character’s blue blood. By refusing to see the truth about her daughters’ perceived mesalliances (despite lives lived coldly in their mother’s all-eclipsing shadow), she allows herself to succumb to that which she so purposely seeks to avoid: the wrath of sexual passion that looses all manner of tragedy upon the family.
Forrister’s extraordinary performance leaves you transfixed, her total control enveloping the theater as you might expect from the force of nature that Lorca has created in Bernarda, herein brought so vividly to life by Malone’s captivating vision for the piece.
We first meet Bernarda and her daughters as they return home from the funeral for her second husband, but we have already learned much about her via the gossipy conversation between her servant Poncia (played with nuanced ferocity by the sublime Rachel Agee) and her housemaid (Grace Kelly Mason) who obviously revile their mistress, yet are completely dependent upon staying in her good graces in order to continue to provide for their families. So, with the stage set for Bernarda’s initial entrance (thanks to the servants’ retelling of her high-handed ways and total dominance of the household), Forrister enters as Bernarda, with the regal bearing of a much-feared and much-maligned monarch, ruling her family with an unyielding sense of purpose.
And despite Bernarda’s control of seemingly every moment in her daughter’s lives, her decision to allow the oldest daughter Angustias to marry—Angustias is the wealthiest of the five, thanks to her inheritance from her father, Bernarda’s first husband—the village’s most eligible bachelor, Pepe el Romano, helps to unravel her life and the very control which she exerts so unrepentingly. Pepe, though never seen onstage, demonstrates his own remarkable control over the sisters by providing much of the dramatic tension and the ensuing consequences of the artfully crafted onstage action, which sets sister against sister, which undermines Bernarda’s thorough dominance.
Bernarda’s quintet of daughters is played by an estimable ensemble of young actresses matriculating in the theater program at Belmont University. The 2011-12 season at Belmont University Theatre has provided a showcase for the women enrolled in the program, and The House of Bernarda Lorca pairs quite nicely with the season-opening Dancing at Lughnasa (which featured performances by Adrienne Hall, Gina D’Arco and Kyla Lowder—all of whom are in this ensemble—and other noteworthy young actors).
