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'Bernard Alba' fails to match playwright's dramatic depths
By LARRY L. KUBERT / For the Lincoln Journal Star
Thursday, Apr 20, 2006 - 11:39:51 pm CDT
Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba” is a simmering, terse dramatic piece that addresses the repression of freedom and self-expression.
In a narrow perspective, it is a seething statement of oppression of Spanish women, but in a broader sense, of dominance against all humanity.
Unfortunately, the Nebraska Wesleyan University production of Lorca’s play delivers such a superficial treatment that the play’s cast never reaches any depth of believability.
And even worse, the play’s cast’s soulless execution removes the passion and romance from the playwright’s script and message. Audience laughter and tittering is far more prevalent than hushed intensity.
Running 90 minutes — without an intermission — “The House of Bernarda Alba” is set in the 1930s in a small village in southern Spain. With the death of her husband, the drama’s title character (played by Traci Lea Young) closes her house for eight years of mourning.
Her five daughters — thirsting for life and love — are forced to accept the cloistered existence and turn upon one another in their rebellion.
Lorca’s play becomes a tale of estrangement from society and self, with Bernarda’s unrelenting control and the daughter’s frustrated suffering, ultimately resulting in dire ruptures.
Instead of communicating this austere solemnity, the Wesleyan cast resorts to an inappropriate, immature giddiness that lays barren any hope of achieving dramatic effect.
Add in a fair share of bumbled lines as well as little comprehension of theatrical pacing or delivery and the result is almost a monotonal (except during the occasional bout of histrionic yelling) gallop through the script.
What is so perplexing about this ailing effort is that director Jay Scott Chipman is usually far more skilled and adept at dealing with his young charges.
And the play’s cast includes some NWU performers — such as Jess Stopak, Sarah Konert, Megan Hicks, Shannon Kirkpatrick and Sara Lechowicz — who have previously demonstrated decided promise.
On the positive side, Michael Reese’s set and lighting design — a planked platform populated by simple stools and a few ornate backed chairs, all blanched under a scorchingly brilliant white light — is the perfect environment to convey the sweltering atmosphere of discontent.
But for whatever reason, the necessary synchronicity for the play to succeed simply is not there.
That is terribly unfortunate. There is nothing better than a solid, tense drama. And there is little that can be done to disguise one that is ineffectual.
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