The House of Bernarda Alba - Lyttleton (NT)

Didn’t enjoy this tonight. Poncia was excellent and a standout, though. Adela felt extremely forced and not emotionally connected, like she was tryingggg to showww her wordsss were importantttt but felt fake.

I saw a lot of Frecknall in this for the worse. So slow. Boring adaptation. Many curse words thrown in. Stand-and-speak valued over genuine interactions for the most part. The beginning had unnecessary we-are-all-talking-over-each-other-this-is-artistic vibe. Then it got slower and slower.

A lot is lost having Pepe onstage. I prefer the secrets to be more secret. It’s like they made everything obvious and forced, and then gave us some bell gongs, clock ticks and a slow-as-molasses tempo to summon up tension.

Makes me glad I missed R&J.

Bernarda, as mentioned above, does not come off as powerful. It just didn’t make sense what the point of view on the play was in this production.

I really wonder how others will feel. This has sold so well at high prices. Good work under bad circumstances from some of the actors. But overall, for me, a dud.

I found this pretty slow at quite a few points, but with enough to enjoy overall. Conversely to some thoughts above I actually found the parts with movement and Pepe to be some of the best moments.

Harriet Walter was the weakest link - with no weight to her portrayal I couldn't imagine any of the daughters being afraid of her. I don't know if she was deliberately playing it for laughs but she certainly got a few (as did others - during times when to me it felt like it wasn't supposed to be particularly funny).

An excellent set and some fantastic performances from many in the cast just about tipped this to a 3.5/5.

Yes! I forgot to mention the same thing happened on Friday night, too.

I saw this on Wednesday but left at interval so I will not rate this. It’s my first time seeing Rebecca’s play and also first time seeing this play so I’m also not sure how the script really is. The main problem for me is Harriet’s Bernarda is not formidable at all to me, so while I could see the point of the play, it was giving me such a hard time as I always had to fill in the blanks of logic to make sense of the plot. And that’s why I didn’t want to see the second half. I know things wouldn’t get better for me.

But I would like to see more works of Rebecca as the pace of the play actually is fine for me, and I could see some interesting ways of doing theatre in it.

If it evokes her Romeo & Juliet, I’m definitely out. That was appalling.

Just Lorca's

Positive if not enthusiastic reception so far, 3* from the Times, Independent and The Stage, 4* from the Evening Standard and WhatsOnStage

I've returned my ticket for next month. Reading comments here have helped me to make up my mind. I've seen a few different productions in Spain, the (terrible) previous NT production and film and TV adaptations. This doesn't sound like a good version at all. I understand that you might to try and understand Bernarda as a victim of a system, this wouldn't make her less of a monster to her daughters.

m.imdb.com/title/tt0092729/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

That's a very good adaptation of probably the most successful theatre production in Spain. There were a few cast changes and a different director but they followed the original production. I think it is on DVD with English subtitles.

I LOVED this!

A surveillance society version of the play that felt thrilling and immediate.

The set is a character, it's see-through gauze walls making it resemble a prison or psychiatric hospital.

I thought the whole ensemble wonderful, with Lizzie Annis exceptional.

Some spoilers follow. . .

For fans of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," think of this as "One Flew Over the Spinsters' Nest," with Harriet Walter as Nurse Ratched.

The striking set allows Walter's Ratched/Bernarda Alba to be forever hovering behind doors and walls, or patrolling the grounds outside, penning her girls into their little see-through box cages, where the play usually has her character absent.

Since you see everyone everywhere all at once, and since Alice Birch creates additional and overlapping dialogue for everyone everywhere, there is so much more to watch and listen to than usual, so many resonances in the machinations of every scheming inmate.

Annis's limping Martirio is the most complex character, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome inmate of the asylum, a nascent Richard III, who has completely imbibed Nurse Walter's watchful cruelty, while at the same time still aching with empathy, love and a yearning for freedom.

By depicting freedom visually, a gold lit shimmering Pape El Romano (James McHugh is the master of lingering lithe movement), watched by awestruck imprisoned girls from their individual cells, ballet dancing his way backwards and forwards, wherever he pleases, Rebecca Frecknall makes all the desperation so palpable.

As Nurse Ratched, Walter is stern, uncompromising, terrifying; as the character best approximating the mischievous lead character of Cuckoo's Nest, stirring up all the other inmates, Thusitha Jayasundera is impish fun as Poncia, and Eileen Nicholas is superb as Bernarda's Mum, still infused with a free spirit despite a lifetime of incarceration.

Usually with this play, for example the Almeida's one, set in Iran, I can watch from a distance, nodding and thinking, yes, that's terrible, that place far far away.

But this one hits harder, for me, cos I can more easily imagine being sectioned into the merciless hands of a Nurse Ratched in a mental health facility lol.

4 and a half stars, as for me, Rebecca Frecknall does it again!

Yet another 3 star review from Arifa Akbar 😏

She's doing Miss Julie in Amsterdam from February