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The House of Bernarda Alba

by Federico García Lorca

In a new English version by David Hare

Better never to lay eyes on a man, never to have seen one. Ever since I was a child, I've been frightened: the look of men, yoking up the oxen, picking up sacks of wheat, calling to
each other, their thick voices, their thick boots. Every time I passed, fear of their hands, of their touch. God made me weak and ugly. It's his way of keeping them away.

So pronounces one of five unmarried daughters before her elder sister, being the richest if least attractive of the bunch, is hastily betrothed. The youngest, burning with desire, begins a passionate, clandestine affair with her sister's suitor. She's spied upon by a jealous sibling, with devastating consequences.

The poet Federico García Lorca was murdered by Franco's supporters on 18 August 1936, just two months after he finished his masterpiece of love, oppression and loathing.

'A riveting production from Howard Davies and a terrific cast in Lorca's allegorical tragedy.'
The Guardian

When it comes to the sexual oppression and frustration of women, no more disturbing drama was produced in the 20th century than Lorca's tale of the tyrannical Bernarda and her five
daughters…Penelope Wilton is terrific as the thunderous matriarch…
An emotional knockout.'
Evening Standard

The laughter – black and bitter – is caught deftly in David Hare's vivid and sardonic new version…Davies' great achievement is to bring out the play's rich humanity, and its seething, often darkly comic conflicts, between the bullying mother and her daughters.'
Daily Telegraph

Howard Davies has hewn finely detailed relationships between the excellent actors playing the sisters, and in this new English version by David Hare, Lorca's poetry remains tantilisingly subtextual, resonating in the mind.'
Independent

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Related Links

• Blood Wedding (1981) Flytower film
• The House of Bernarda Alba Flash animation

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