Bernarda Alba Reviews NOW IN — Page 2

Everything dies in commercial off-Broadway these days. Nothing turns a profit anymore. This show would cost nearly a $1 million to mount Off-Broadway and it would NEVER have a chance of recouping. Let it extend at the Mitzi once or twice more (I don't think anything is scheduled for it immediately) and then close.

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I couldn't imagine seeing a LaChiusa show only five times.

But I have.

And it is sad.

::listens to TWP::

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The Hollywood Reporter is Mixed:

"LaChiusa retains Garcia Lorca's plot and characters, but neither he nor director-choreographer Graciela Daniele ("Chronicle of a Death Foretold") infuse the material with musical or dramatic life. Songs are occasionally delicate, occasionally flavored with an appealing flamenco rhythm and a strummed guitar, but rarely do they reflect or accentuate the characters' emotions. Unlike LaChiusa's hot, inventive score for "See What I Wanna See" last fall at the Public Theater, the music for "Bernarda Alba" sounds bland and detached from the action.

As for the performances on the intimate, three-quarter-round stage at LCT's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, the black-costumed actors project little characterization and even less sense of the tension underlying the women's relationships. Where is the jealousy, sexual frustration and cruelty that Garcia Lorca intended? They exist in LaChiusa's text, but Daniele has neglected to elicit them in any palpable way onstage.

Even Rashad, usually so affecting, encounters difficulties. Her voice sounds tired, and her Bernarda Alba reaches for a fierceness that Rashad can't support or sustain."


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002116854

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Well, at least they are all saying the same thing, huh?

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Variety is Mixed-to-Negative:

"New York stages have not been kind to Federico Garcia Lorca this season. First he was summoned from the grave to figure as a spiritual guide in Nilo Cruz's soporific play "Beauty of the Father." Now his simmering drama "The House of Bernarda Alba" has been subjected to an unnecessary musicalization by the ubiquitous Michael John LaChiusa. However, there's less in this stubbornly uninvolving treatment to suggest the hand of the much in-demand musical theater composer than that of a first-year women's studies student, boldfacing the play's themes of female oppression with all the delicacy of flamenco heels pounding a wooden floor.
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The proud, muscular rhythms of the form -- punctuated by claps, clicks and stomps -- together with the jagged, modernist sounds more characteristic of the prolific LaChiusa, make "Bernarda Alba" a dark and intriguing musical score. But the droning, atonal songs, with their ponderously literal lyrics, are too fragmented to define character or to build emotion or dramatic momentum.

As a narrative, the adaptation connects the dots of Lorca's plot efficiently enough. But rather than lending fresh resonance to the tragic tale of a tyrannical widowed mother and her five unwed daughters, the musical interpretation chills and dilutes the fiery passions, bristling tensions and caged sexuality so essential to the play.
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But while an effective presentation of Lorca's play can generate searing dramatic potency and trenchant political metaphor in this hothouse of women, here there's something distancing and obvious about all the overwrought resentment being spat out onstage."

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Yeah, I think this show is sorta like See What I Wanna See. The show's cast is too great to have a big commerical run. I think it will run its current run and then close. It's def. too edgy and absurd for broadway. I hope it gets recorded with this great cast. Seems like LaChiusa is just pumping these scores out. Any idea on what he's working on next?

Well someone is writing and Lincoln Center finds the $ to put em on
I say Go
If they can Find another PIAZZA
keep lookin

Is there a reason that the only positive reviews are from the online critics that only message board fanatics read?

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I think it should be required for people who are going to review anything to have some REAL education in musical composition, acting, and general stagecraft. I mean more than just I go to a lot of theatre. Eating a lot of food doesn't make you a food critic. IT shouldn't work for theatre. I think a lot of people review things and they have NO idea what they're reviewing. Most of them are great writers but don't know what a good score would consist of. It's a little annoying for people who have trained and actually know what they're talking about.

I hate when people compare him to Sondheim.

He is LaChiusa. Not Sondheim.


But it seems this is going to be a more of a LaChiusa-fan show.

Ugh. He needs another TWP.

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I'm really interested to see what people around these parts think of Nikki James. She seems so sweet and if she proves she can pull of a show like this as well as All Shook Up that is pretty versatile. I would love to see her in Caroline, or Change.

Akiva

Poor MARIE CHRISTINE was compared to SWEENEY TODD.

I don't see it...I mean....Medea had other people boil their father. Sweeney cooked them into pies.

But, the serious tone of the shows...

I don't see it.

People find it much easier to compare to works than to accept them as two different entities.

There are only so many themes.

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Or maybe it is what the critics have been saying - Phylicia isn't oppressive enough?

I can talk more after I see it this week. But until then....I can speak only for Lorca's play.

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