Play review: Cerritos pays homage to Lorca in 'House'

By Daniel Frias
On-line Forty-Niner

The work of Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain's most famous poet, was banned after his death in 1936 by the Franco government. Several years later, even with the bans intact, public outcry forced the production of his plays. The House of Bernarda Alba, the first of Lorca's plays to be produced in Spain after his death, is being presented by the Cerritos College Theatre Department at the school's Burnight Studio Theatre running through April 14.

The play takes place at the turn of the century 20 century in the courtyard of Bernarda Alba's old Spanish style house with a front black gate that locks out the rest of the world from what goes on between Bernarda and her five daughters.

Bernarda is stern matriarch who stops at nothing to keep her family's name from being disgraced, even if it means denying her daughters their happiness. Just widowed, she announces to her daughters that they must endure a traditional eight-year period of mourning.

Each daughter desperately wants to be in love and married, but their tyrannical mother, Bernarda, will hear nothing of the matter and shuts the door on them, forcing them to suffer in silence and accept her wishes. All except one daughter, Adela, who goes against her mothers orders and follows her heart by falling in love with the man her sister is to marry.

The House of Bernarda Alba was directed by Georgia Well and consists of three acts. Each act begins with a soft melody by guitarist Ana Perez.

The play opens up with a maid cleaning the courtyard before Bernarda and her daughters return from church where they had just given a mass for the death of Bernarda's husband.

Claudia Martinez gives a realistic portrayal of a menacing Bernarda who terrorizes everybody who gets in her way. Martinez' interpretation of Bernarda make the hairs on your arms and neck stick up from absolute fear as she beats her daughters with her cane for disobeying her orders.

In one scene Bernarda beats her eldest daughter Anguistas for wearing makeup just after her fathers wake. Bernarda calls her a whore and whales on her with her cane forcing Angustias to cry and be saved only by her sisters.

Bernarda then punishes all her daughters saying "this is my house and you will obey my rules."

The play, which is slow at times with the sisters bickering and talking for most of the play, builds to a climatic end that leaves everybody shocked and horrified.