Deep Inside Us

In the play by Federico García Lorca, the last one written by the Andalusian author before being executed by the Phalangist forces during the Spanish Civil War, the widow Bernarda Alba takes charge, with an iron fist, of the lives of her five daughters (Angustias, Madalena, Amélia, Martírio and Adela). The house is the jail where the matriarch encloses and oppresses the drives of her descendants.

Starting from the plot of this absolute masterpiece, João Garcia Miguel (who some years ago brought to the theaters another of the essential pieces of the author, Yerma) wrote a text as if looking for “the hidden and inaccessible secret it contains.” Suppressing some characters, the show explores “a deep connection with the earth and body” that the director reveals in the writing and in the universe of Lorca. A universe he takes to himself. Therefore, The House of Bernarda Alba according to Garcia Miguel, moves away from “the gaze on daily life to dive into the depths of each one of us.”

Bernarda Alba’s character – here interpreted surprisingly by the well-known Irish actor Sean O’Callaghan – is paradigmatic of this view, as if cruelty was, in short, an expression of the human being. “To save her family, Bernarda becomes the despot. Mourning is not the catharsis, but the barbarity,” the director highlights. “At the end, this character embodies the invisible cycle between extremes that each of us has within us and that at any moment, without us understanding, reveals itself.”

In one of the points of these extremes, Bernardas Albas appears and they “grow in the cruel light of our day, becoming more and more coercive, with discourses where they admit mechanisms of repression and censorship, in the name of freedom.” But at least on this stage, rather than addressing economics, politics or society in general, “what really matters is to dig deep into the human intimate” especially in a search for everything that is beyond reason.

An international cast

In this production of Companhia João Garcia Miguel, the director has only one Portuguese actor, the young Duarte Melo, with whom he previously worked in Tio João. “He is a great performer, with an impressive physicality, one of those who has the right attributes for the kind of work e do. “ He plays the role of the housekeeper Poncia. But, as we have seen, this is not the only “suppression” of gender that the show contains, since Sean O’Callaghan plays the castrating mother Bernarda Alba.

For the actor with a vast curriculum in Shakespeare’s Globe and Royal Shakespeare Company productions, “it’s a huge challenge because this is one of the most important characters in drama worldwide. Curiously, today there are great actresses playing male characters. In Britain, it has been recurrent to see women playing Lear or Richard III. Bernarda was offered to me, and I feel that it is a work of enormous freedom, so great that it goes beyond gender.”

For Garcia Miguel, both choices allow “to avoid a predetermined image of the characters,” since “the theater is no longer the world of naturalism, but of possibilities.” And how would the director not take advantage of the possibility of having an actor like Sean O’Callaghan under his direction, he who is a great admirer of Garcia Miguel’s work?

The feminine presence is in the Brazilian interpreters, Annette Naiman and Paula Liberati, to whom Garcia Miguel gave the roles of the daughters Martírio and Adela. For both, “it’s not just about working with someone as recognized as Garcia Miguel. To do this piece, considering we left Brazil two and a half months ago, has a very special meaning for us. There are a lot of Bernardas Albas walking around there.”

After the preview at Teatro Ibérico, from the18th to the 20th of October, this visceral and exciting look on The House of Bernarda Alba will return to the same stage between December 12 and 22. Before this more extensive season in Lisbon, the show passes through Brazil during the month of November.