THEATRE
The House of Bernarda Alba, by Patricia Cornelius after Federico Garcia Lorca, Melbourne Theatre Company, Arts Centre Melbourne, until July 7
★★★½
REVIEWER Cameron Woodhead

Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca completed his final play, The House of Bernarda Alba, not long before he was murdered in the Civil War, and the spectre of authoritarianism looms in the life-denying severity of the title character – a despotic mother who keeps her daughters caged in a state of mourning, away from the world of men.

Patricia Cornelius has adapted Lorca’s play to a contemporary, Western Australian mining family. It’s an inspired idea to imagine theatre’s most controlling matriarch recast as an iron lady, as it were, and Cornelius handles it with typical grit and vigour, though this Bernarda is no captain of industry (not yet, anyway) and we do get glimpses of the vulnerability that makes her so unforgiving of others.

Director Leticia Caceres has created a striking production with some fine acting and electrifying dramatic moments, though I’m not sure she has managed the contextual and cultural shift in a way that’s entirely credible.

The trapped atmosphere, though, is palpable. Marg Horwell’s set neatly evokes the cloistered, lonely world of an outback station – wooden slats that suggest both prison and stockade, fringing a bare stage decorated only by aircons and bug zappers and the silhouette of a fan whirring overhead. Rachel Burke’s lighting sweeps from harsh glare to textures of desert twilight, adding depth to the sense of isolation.