Federico García Lorca described the oft-adapted “House of Bernarda Alba” simply as “the drama of the women of a Spanish village”. But as Haitian-American playwright Diane Exavier knows, women are in more danger whenever they get together, especially when they are in mourning.
Exavier draws inspiration from Lorca’s work for The Daughters of Bernarda, but she replaces the domineering mother in the original with an oppressive mother in the summer of New York. Bernalda (here we call Mama) is not seen, but she has her five daughters bike to her parents’ house in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and her grandmother Florence (Tamara Tuney). and grieves her recently deceased father.
As in the case of Lorca, the play has no male characters, and its stench remains. It’s partly a literal stench, represented by a bushel of her father’s laundry that her daughters have to clean before Mama comes back. But more symbolically, this is a metaphorical stench, the odor of the ungrateful sacrifices women make for men, especially their eldest daughter Louise (Pascal Armand), who bring men to the ground. Even long after it fell.
Mom is away to bury her husband in Haiti. In Haiti she said, “It’s cheaper than burying her in Brooklyn.” Much of “The Daughters of Bernarda” is based on this irony that conveys Exavier’s thoughts on gentrification. The play makes little mention of the overall cause of the problem, but the deafening drums of construction, the glitzy landscape of new skyscrapers, the proliferation of upscale coffee shops, and other reminders of its impact. give me Bernarda’s second youngest girlfriend, Adela (Tagycinia), says sourly. “It’s another Brooklyn.”
The loss of a sister is therefore not only personal, but also territorial. And each of Bernarda’s daughters reacts differently. Grief makes the nervous Louise more greedy, the noble Harriet (Alana Raquel Bowers) more love-hungry, the ever-lewd Marise (Malika Samuel) more glamorous, and the righteous Adela sooner. Angry, naive Lena (Kristin Dodson) becomes more dissociative. She finds solace in her favorite reality show. When the sisters get together, their jokes become humorous and lively. But Exavier often trumps off the skin of the sisters with sermons laced with metaphors.
Director Dominic Ryder subdues the film’s bouncy energy with languid melodrama, with less control over its sapping monologue than more naturalistic dialogue. And Carlos J. Soto’s stark landscape design does little good. His set, an angular cavern made up of black mesh curtains and obtrusive pillars, is the complete opposite of the colorful, crowded Haitian homes I know.
Abstraction doesn’t work for this job, and in the end you’re going for concreteness. Taking cues from island scribes such as the Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite and the Jamaican playwright Sylvia Winter (Lorca’s translation greatly influenced The Daughters of Bernarda), Exavier adapted the play. used to emphasize the importance of belonging to a place and how painful it can be to belong to a place. Memories of that place go to the grave when its essence disappears. It’s no wonder her characters come up with so many real-life street names in their neighborhoods: “Trash All Over Rogers,” “Macy’s in Fulton,” and “Church’s Grill.” Naming is an act of remembrance and a way of preserving a home.
Daughters of Bernarda Through June 4th at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan. thenewgroup.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
This review is supported by Critical Minded, an effort to invest in the work of cultural critics from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
