The House of Bernarda Alba (NHB Classic Plays)

Gabriel García Lorca, Rona Munro

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781788501446
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre européen

García Lorca's drama about the shattering effects of emotional repression on a family of cloistered daughters, in a version by playwright Rona Munro for the critically acclaimed Shared Experience Theatre Company.

When Bernarda's husband dies, she locks all the doors and windows. She tells her grown-up daughers to sew and be silent. 'There are eight years of mourning ahead of us. While it lasts not even the wind will get into this house.' But locks can't hold back the growing tide of desire...

Rona Munro's version of The House of Bernarda Alba was first staged by Shared Experience Theatre Company at Salisbury Playhouse in March 1999 before a UK tour.

'Rona Munro's new translation is vigorous and direct' - Sunday Telegraph

ACT ONE

An inner room in BERNARDA’s house. Church bells are ringing in the distance.

The SERVANT enters.

SERVANT. I’ve got the pain of those bells right inside my head.

PONCIA enters, eating bread and sausage.

PONCIA. Over two hours of gabbling and wailing. There are priests here from all over. The church is looking lovely. At the first response Magdalena fainted.

SERVANT. She’s the one who’s going to be lonely now.

PONCIA. She’s the only one who loved the father. Oh! Thank God we’re alone for a moment. I’m going to stuff myself.

SERVANT. If Bernarda sees you . . .

PONCIA. Oh right, she’s not eating so she doesn’t care if the rest of us drop dead of hunger! Slave driver! Bullying old bitch! I’ve cheated her. I’ve opened the sausage jar.

SERVANT. Why don’t you give me some for my little girl, Poncia?

PONCIA. Dive in! Grab a handful of chickpeas too. She’ll not count them today.

VOICE (off). Bernarda!

PONCIA. There’s the old woman! Is she locked in alright?

SERVANT. With two turns of the key.

PONCIA. But you have to bolt the cross bar too. She’s got fingers like five lock-picks.

VOICE (MARIA JOSEFA). Bernarda!

PONCIA (calling off). She’s coming! (To SERVANT.) Do a good job now. If Bernarda doesn’t see a shine on everything she’ll pull out the few hairs I’ve got left.

SERVANT. That woman!

PONCIA. She crushes everything close to her. She could sit on your heart and watch you die a whole year and she’d never drop that frosty smile she wears on her wicked face. Scrub then! Scrub those glasses!

SERVANT. I’ve got blood on my hands from all my scrubbing.

PONCIA. She’s the cleanest, she’s the most respectable, she’s better than the lot of us. Her poor husband, he was due a good rest.

The bells stop.

SERVANT. Did all the relatives come?

PONCIA. Just hers. His people hate her. They just stopped to see him dead and make the sign of the cross over him.

SERVANT. Are there enough chairs?

PONCIA. Plenty. They can sit on the floor. Since Bernarda’s father died nobody’s been welcome under this roof. She doesn’t want them to see her in her lair. Damn her!

SERVANT. She’s been good to you.

PONCIA. Thirty years washing her sheets. Thirty years eating her scraps, nights nursing her coughs, days with my eye squashed to the crack in the door to spy on the neighbours and bring her the stories. In all that time together there have been no secrets between her and me and I say damn her! I’d stick a nail in her eyes.

SERVANT. Listen to you!

PONCIA. But I’m the best bitch she has. I bark when she tells me to, I sink my teeth in the beggars’ heels when she sets me at them. My sons work in her fields. Thanks to her they’ve both earned enough to marry. But one day, one day I’ll have had it with her.

SERVANT. And that day?

PONCIA. And that day I’ll lock myself in a room with her and spit in her face for a whole year. ‘Bernarda that’s for this, and this for that, and this is for the rest!’ . . . till she looks like a lizard the little boys have smashed on the stones and that’s what she is, her and all her family. Oh no, I don’t envy her. She’s stuck with five women, five big, ugly, daughters, and only Angustias, the eldest has any money at all.

SERVANT. Well she’s daughter to Bernarda’s first husband. As for the rest . . .

PONCIA (chiming in). . . . a pile of embroidered lace, a whole heap of petticoats but all they’ll inherit is bread and grapes.

SERVANT. That would do me.

PONCIA. All we have is our hands and a hole in the ground at the end.

SERVANT. When you have nothing that’s the only land they’ll ever let you inherit.

PONCIA (at cupboard). There are marks on this glass.

SERVANT. I can’t get them off with soap or rag.

The bells ring out.

PONCIA. The last response. I’m going over to listen to it. I love the way that priest sings, in the pater noster, up and up and up, little by little like a pitcher being filled up with water. It cracked in the end of course but it’s glorious to hear him. Still we’ll never hear the like of the old sacristan Tonchapinos, he sang at my mother’s mass, God rest her. The walls trembled and his ‘Amen’ was like a wolf running through the church. (Imitating it.) A-a-a-a-men! (She starts coughing.)

SERVANT. You’ll be swallowing dust!

PONCIA. I’d rather swallow something else. (She exits, laughing.)

The SERVANT cleans, the bells ring out.

SERVANT. Ding, ding, dong. May God forgive him.

BEGGAR (coming on with a child). Blessed be God.

SERVANT. Ding, ding, dong. Let’s hope he won’t call us for a few years! Ding, ding, dong.

BEGGAR (louder, getting irritated). Blessed be God.

SERVANT (annoyed). For ever and ever.

BEGGAR. I came for the scraps.

The bells stop.

SERVANT. The gate’s that way. Today’s scraps are for me.

BEGGAR. Missus, you’ve got someone looking after you. Me and my daughter are on our own.

SERVANT. So are the dogs and they live.

BEGGAR. They always give them to me.

SERVANT. Get out of here! Who let you in? You’ll make dirty footprints all over the floor!

They leave, the SERVANT goes on scrubbing.

SERVANT. Floors I’ve shined up with oil, their cupboards, their ornaments, their iron beds . . . What do we have? A mud hut, a plate full of bitterness and one spoon to eat it with. I pray for the day no one has that story to tell. (The bells ring again.) Oh yes! Ring those bells, bring out the wooden box with its gold trim and carry it with silken ropes. You’ll still come to the same end as me. You’re in the mud now, like the rest of us. Suffer it Antonio Maria Benavides, stiff in your hand-made suit and your high boots, suffer it! You’ll never get your hand up my skirts behind the corral again.

A crowd of WOMEN in mourning enter in pairs. They wear black shawls and skirts and carry black fans. They enter slowly until the stage is full.

SERVANT (breaking into a wail). Ay! Antonio Maria Benavides. You’ll never see these rooms or taste bread here again. I was your best servant. I loved you the most. How can I live without you? How can I live?

The mourners finish coming in, BERNARDA enters with her five DAUGHTERS.

BERNARDA (to the SERVANT). Be quiet!

SERVANT (crying). Yes, Bernarda.

BERNARDA. Less snivelling and more scrubbing. You should have had all this clean for the wake. Get out. This isn’t your place.

The MAID exits, crying.

BERNARDA. The poor are like animals. It’s as if they’re made of different stuff.

WOMAN 1. The poor feel their sorrows too.

BERNARDA. And they forget them all in front of a plate of chick peas.

WOMAN 2 (shyly). We all have to eat.

BERNARDA. You shouldn’t talk like that in front of your elders.

WOMAN 1. Be quiet girl!

BERNARDA. N...