Another Part of the House

Cruz’s “re-imagining” of Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba is sort of like the work of Wicked author Gregory Maguire, who’s made a small industry out of tackling classic tales from the point of view of another character. But where Maguire might radically reinvent Bernarda Alba, Cruz just barely tweaks it. García Lorca’s story remains largely the same: After the death of her second husband, conservative matron Bernarda (she of the iron fist and sharp cane) forces her five daughters into an eight-year period of mourning; her obsession with appearances and repression of her daughters’ desires lead inevitably to tragedy.

Cruz moves the setting from Spain to Cuba, but more importantly she also moves it just across the Fantasyland border into the suburb of Magical Realismville. Her biggest change involves Bernarda’s crazy mother Maria Josefa, who makes only brief appearances in the original. Here Maria Josefa drives the action, pushing granddaughter Adela to hook up with Pepe el Romano, the village hottie with whom all the sisters are obsessed; Pepe, unseen in Bernarda Alba, appears here, mute but in the flesh, an instrument controlled by the grandmother. Keenan has assembled a killer set of actors and created some real visual poetry, but Cruz’s play still feels academic. The playwright keeps so much of García Lorca’s work verbatim, and brings so little new to it (aside from a modern ability to talk more frankly about sexuality), that we can’t help but wonder, What was wrong with the classic?—Kris Vire