“It’s a wrenching watch, a mix of contemporary and ancient, social and elemental tragedy, and a grim demonstration of how, as Birch puts it, simply being born a woman can feel like the greatest punishment. Bernarda’s climactic call for “silence” is the final stifling of a desperate female cry.”
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“This production has so many ideas flung at its source that some are bound to stick and some not...Federico Garcia Lorca’s play is one of the greatest of the 20th century, but its power is consistently undermined by the staging...Nevertheless, the doubly shocking denouement will live long in the memory, both for its hyper-realistic staging and its closing speech which... is the most shattering in theatre.”
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“The endings to the first and second act are among the most shocking things I’ve seen on stage recently. Not your average Christmas show then, but this is bracingly good and important.”
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“The production doesn’t always quite hold the tension between naturalism and expressionism that it seeks...It’s surprisingly funny at moments, always pointed and sharp...But the strength of the whole lies in a magnificent ensemble cast, each bringing surprising notes to characters who could become one-dimensional...It’s a superb night of theatre, a new look at a difficult but always timely play.”
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“Lorca’s play is an impressive exercise in empathy for 1930s rural women and their trapped, constrained lives, one that treads emotional territory that few other men of his time dared to explore. But it has limits. To a 21st-century audience, its protests against the traditional female frustrations of enforced celibacy and sewing can feel tired and predictable.”
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"There is great innovation here but the terrible swell of passion, frustration and intensity needed for the play to gain its full and devastating tragedy does not reach a head."
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"It takes too long to ignite, yet this slow-burn staging flickers with a kind of compulsion. It’s just curious that, even when it generates a pale flame of passion, it remains so chilly."
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“This isn’t Frecknall’s finest moment – it’s hard to avoid melodrama with Lorca, and this production does often feel overwrought.”
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