Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice follows the five daughters of the very patient Mister Bennet and the very impatient Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth Bennett the most prominent. Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye has five daughters that give him no end of troubles (or, in his case, tsoris) as they defy traditions. Federico Garcia Lorca’s Bernarda Alba has five daughters whom she’s inclined to keep in line.
It’s clear that there’s something about families boasting five daughters that appeals to authors, so much so there’s a new one, and this one owes its origins to Garcia Lorca’s internationally acclaimed The House of Bernarda Alba. It’s Bernarda’s Daughters, a beautifully poetic spin by Diane Exavier.
Exavier places her quintet – nurse Louise (Pascale Armand), librarian Harriet (Alana Raquel Bowers), Lena (Kristin Dodson), Maryse (Malika Samuel), and Adela (Taji Senior) – in a Flatbush, Brooklyn house at the corner of Lenox and Bedford. They live there with granma Florence Delva (Tamara Tunie) and mother Bernarda, who’s never seen during the action. She’s only loosened her grip on her children temporarily, however, while burying her second husband in Haiti, their country of origin.
Left to their own devices, yet still seeming mostly housebound, the Abellard sisters chat incessantly among each other, often at odds one with the others or changing combos when taking sides. During the 90 minutes or so Exavier allots them, they get around to any number of subjects, like love and sex and where the two intersect or don’t. They also comment on the violence and protests going on in the streets around them, thereby raising issues that make Bernarda’s Daughters as timely as today’s headlines.
Pointedly and infuriatingly they dwell on two crucial subjects: 1) the house that the eldest two of them, Louise and Harriet, are apparently thinking about buying and moving into; and, even more disconcerting 2) Bernarda’s Brooklyn house and how through various machinations – at the conniving hands of men – the deed to the house has been sold. They can no longer claim to be legal tenants.
In a series of introductory monologues, Louise says, “Our city is dying and our city is inside of us. There are countries that are dying and those countries are inside of us. We are at the edge of living. We are the world we live in.” The lines are immediately poetic, and along with the other intros indicate the mode in which Exavier is writing.
Importantly, she’s indicating the mostly quiet despair in which the Alba daughters are living, but throughout she’s given her writing a subtle, and thoroughly satisfying, lift. That’s to say, someone reading Bernarda’s Daughters might think the poetry would be difficult to play, would give the dialogue an affected edge. (Even the stage directions for this five-act play done in one uninterrupted act are poetic. Act five begins with this: “Morning. One of those quiet summer days that anticipate nothing.”)
But reading the play is not seeing the play – since all plays are written to be performed (well, maybe not Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt). Nonetheless, the perhaps imagined poetry stigma that might be pegged to Exavier’s piece is nowhere present. Much of this achievement is, not surprisingly, provided by excellent acting. Director Rider creates an atmosphere in which Armand, Bowers, Dodson, Samuel and Senior – differentiated and enhanced in their differences by costumer Rodrigo Muñoz – sound as if they’re speaking as any group of young women might speak when excitedly talking with each other, not an entirely simple feat.
Rider also has them in nearly constant motion on Carlos J. Soto’s inspired set, which simultaneously looks claustrophobic and not. His Alba, or Abellard, house is elegantly constructed of black metal beams outlining the windows and walls. The audience members, seated on three sides of the thrust stage, can easily see all movement, but the encased sisters only have access to the “dying city” when looking, mournfully, out the few indicated windows.
By the way, there are moments when actual poems are delivered. Maryse begins Exavier’s second act with this:
I always wonder where cats go when it gets hot/They just disappear./I see their tails from under the cars on Lincoln Road,/their eyes glowing in the alleyway that crosses Midwood,/not escaping the heat, just abiding it,/lowering their heads to their paws, resting,/practicing endurance.
That’s only the poem’s kick-off. It gets steamier. Yes, Bernarda’s Daughters is undeniably one steamy work of art. As such, it joins a growing group of outstanding plays from current playwrights drawing attention to their cultures that they were able to draw much less frequently in the past. They’re now able, even invited and encouraged, to tell about people who, as the increasingly heard phrase goes, “look like me.” Bernarda’s Daughters is very good news, indeed.
Bernarda’s Daughters opened May 23, 2023, at Signature Center and runs through June 4. Tickets and information: thenewgroup.org
