Bernarda Alba – a warning from Spanish patriarchy and fascism

Frederico Garcia Lorca completed The House of Bernarda Alba, his final play, in June 1936. On 16 August, he was arrested by the fascists and, two days later, murdered by a firing squad. One of those thought responsible, a distant relative, boasted that he had fired “two bullets into his arse for being a queer”.

The play was banned in Spain until 1963. That was partly because of what it suggested politically, about the nature of dictatorships and the inevitability of their ultimate failure, but also because the behaviour and language of the characters was regarded as shockingly immoral in a country that was still a fascist dictatorship.

Indeed, it was not until 1978 that the Spanish constitution gave men and women equality under the law, effectively ending the Franco regime’s system of guardianship for single women. In Francoist Spain, motherhood was the very definition of womanhood.

It’s not difficult to see why the play was considered ‘problematic’ in Spain then, and this latest production, a new adaptation by Alice Birch at the National Theatre in London until early January, reveals once again not only its power, but also reminds us that it is still completely topical.

The titular character has just become a widow and has stated that her five daughters will observe a years-long period of official mourning for their father. The exception, we learn, is the oldest daughter, Angustias, who is 39 and already engaged to local village hunk, Pepe El Romano.

The trouble is, while she doesn’t love him, she knows it’s her way out of this household – but two of her sisters do hanker after him and the youngest, Adela, is already having an affair with him.

As Poncio, Bernarda’s maid, tells Adela brutally: be patient – at such an age, Angustias is likely to die in childbirth and then Pepe will be free to marry her. However, Adela isn’t prepared to wait and moves forward with her rebellion.

Here is a work that, on the cusp of the Spanish Civil War and the triumph of Spanish fascism, railed against the country’s deeply patriarchal society – a society where the Catholic church would link arms with a fascist regime to promote and enforce exactly such patriarchal views.

Never mind these women having sexual needs and desires, one ‘crime’ in the play is having a white fan rather than a mourning black one.

While it was written just before the civil war, Lorca foresaw dictatorship; Bernarda is a dictator in her own home. She is quite prepared to openly and physically torture one of her own daughters for stealing Angustias’s photo of Pepe – yet persists in saying it was a ‘joke’ and refusing to accept that the daughter in question is actually in love/lust with Pepe too.

So much of the power of this work comes from the fact that there is no male voice heard. Pepe El Romano appears, but only ever silently. This is women policing each other according to patriarchal rules. Sisters telling on sisters; servants fanning the flames. There is, of course, a storm – a reckoning – coming. Or is it? Will what happens really change Bernarda and how she rules her daughters with a rod of iron? Lorca – and Birch – leave that open, though only just.

But ours is a time when author Margaret Atwood finds herself frequently reminding people that The Handmaid’s Tale was “not a manual!”

US states are banning abortion and making contraception access much more difficult. In Iran, people (predominantly but not exclusively women) are being murdered by the state because they will not cover their heads for a ‘morality’ law. In Afghanistan, the Taliban closes beauty salons.

In the US and UK there’s a pearl-clutching obsession with trans women (it’s never trans men, note) and whether they are ‘real women’ and/or a danger to (real) ‘women and children’.

In the UK, we can see an increasing influence from those with similarly conservative religious and socially political positions.

For example, in May this year, British Conservative Party MP Miriam Cates, a religious fundamentalist herself, claimed that the UK’s low birth rate is the most pressing policy issue of the generation and is caused in part by “cultural Marxism” – a far-right, antisemitic dog whistle if ever you wanted one.

She was addressing the National Conservatism conference. It was in London – though run by a US-based right-wing thinktank. Ms Cates frequently speaks out against trans people, was a congregant of an evangelical church that has carried out conversion ‘therapy’ (she denies knowledge of this) and has linked with a charity, The Christian Institute, that wants Section 28 back and a higher age of consent for homosexuals.

She is far from alone. Add in the likes of Danny Kruger MP (Tory), Kemi Badenoch MP (Tory secretary of state for business and trade), Rosie Duffield MP (Labour), Joanna Cherry MP (SNP and a lesbian) and House of Commons Alba party leader Neale Hanvey MP – himself gay – and you get an idea of where we are. And they are not alone.

A short while ago, over on X/Twitter, I found this in my notifications.

Presumably, either my views on sexuality and gender render me ‘male’ or some people (or AI) think that my avatar cannot possibly reflect someone who was ‘assigned female at birth’. A year ago, at the theatre for my last birthday, I was challenged by a woman (I assume) as to whether I was in the right queue for the toilets.

In other words, I wasn’t ‘womaning’ enough.

This is men – and women – policing how women look and behave. This is men – and women – enforcing patriarchal views. As Bernarda Alba does. Remember that I said this production is timely?

But back to the production itself. The first half in particular is simply stunning theatre, as the female cast range around a series of rooms in a set that never represents a home, but suggests a prison/convent. All the bedrooms are hung with crucifixes. A rifle hangs in the living/dining room, suggesting the tragedy to come, and the walls are not solid, affording no privacy to any of the inmates. Merle Hensel’s set is a claustrophobic wonder.

Rebecca Frecknall’s direction is excellent. It requires the audience to concentrate so hard to see and understand all the individual stories going on, overlapping, all at the same time, yet offers huge rewards for doing so.

Pepe El Romano (James McHugh) never speaks, but his arsenal includes dance to suggest the erotic as his mere presence – albeit beyond the locked gates of the Alba household – stirs all the daughters imprisoned inside.

And then there is Harriet Walter (left, with Rosalind Eleanzar as Angustias), whose casting essentially made me book for this, on my birthday, after just becoming, myself, a widow.

She is superb as the eponymous Bernarda. Steely, hypocritical, vicious and without a shred of humanity as she rules her household. Utterly bound up in ‘respedctability’.

Of the daughters, particular mention to Imogen Mackie Walker, who had to step in to play Adela the night I saw it. She was excellent. Plaudits also go to Rosalind Eleanzar as Angustias, Eileen Nicholas, as Maria Josefa – Bernarda’s dotty old mother, who her daughter tries to keep imprisoned in her room – and Thusitha Jayasundra as Poncia.

This really is a stunning adaptation and production of an iconic play that, almost a century after it was penned, remains – tragically – absolutely one for our times.

Drag as protest in award-winning doc Queendom

“I just hope people get it and don’t think I’m some sort of propaganda freak,” says Gena Marvin, as they prepare to take their performance art onto the streets of their home town Magadan, an old Soviet gulag.

“I think drag’s always been political,” responds their friend, who is filming the performance for social media. “Totally!” says Gena.

Queendom is an award-winning documentary film from Agniia Galdanova that should be seen by as wide an audience as possible.

Gena is a 22-year-old queer artist who was already using their art to make statements against the homophobic, nationalistic Russian regime.

Seeing the film, just days after a ruling by the Supreme Court of Russia stating that the “international public LGBT movement” – whatever that is – is “extremist,” and effectively outlawing any public LGBT-related activity, adds further context.

As Gena discusses the “exaggerated” nature of drag, they observe how that obviously means it draws attention to itself, and how “all important issues deserve attention” – in this case, the Russian war on Ukraine.

Brought up by their grandparents after their parents died, Gena is abused, physically and verbally, by residents in Magadan – and verbally by their grandfather – before leaving to study in Moscow. There, they joins protests against the war.

A scene where they watch through a car window while travelling through the Russian capital, with scores of police in riot gear heading in the same direction, on foot, is just a single example of many powerful ones.

They create their own costumes, largely from junk and tape, often with a resulting otherworldliness. Indeed, early on, they express how, even as the film was being made, they were still exploring where they fitted in any kind of the boxes/labels that ‘normal’ society tries to impose on everyone.

In today’s Russia, Putin uses the ‘traditional family’ as a distraction from other issues and to maintain the support of ultra-orthodox Christian leaders in the country. It’s no coincidence either that the Supreme Court statement came on the cusp of a presidential election year.

Gena is thrown off their course for “using” the colours of the Russian flag in a protest costume, on the grounds that that “violated federal law”.

The film offers a great appreciation of what performance art can do. Gena disappearing below a raft of bodies clad in plastic tape colours of the Russian flag is incredibly powerful.

In the course of all the harassment and brutality that faces them, Gena maintains dignity.

The film also illustrates the bravery of anti-war protestors in general, facing baton assaults as police claim that arrests are to “stop the spread of COVID-19”.

Galdanova’s film is, at all times, calm – surprisingly so, given what the camera records. It’s no surprise that it’s been seen at a number of film festivals and has already won a number of awards.

With a limited cinema release, it can be streamed via watch.dogwoof.com.

Updated: Queendom will be screening tonight (12 November 2024) on BBC4 at 10pm.

Alun Armstrong shines in, and lifts, a slight play

To Have and to Hold is the new play from Richard Bean, writer of the massive global hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, and takes place in the Yorkshire village of Wetwang – and yes, it’s a real place.

 

There, we meet Jack and Florence Kirk, a couple in their 90s, both struggling with ill health and the realities of old age. They are joined by Rob and Tina, their adult children, who live far away from Yorkshire. Rob, a novelist and screenwriter, flits between London and LA, while Tina, who runs a group of private GP services, is based in the south west of England and is contemplating a move to Australia.

 

The siblings have been invited home by Jack, who knows that they need to discuss, as a family, the failing health of both himself and his wife. He has already had prepared power of attorney documents.

 

Which is pretty much the plot – although that needed discussion never really happens. We do get a slight (very slight) subplot about a crime, while ex-copper Jack, when alone, spends time preserving stories of his favourite cases on an old tape recorder.

 

There are light references to the generational divide in such things as the internet – and Jack gets to have a very a good riff on smartphones and how people have stopped seeing the world around them because they’re always looking down at their small screens – plus nods to the difficulties the elderly face when, for instance, the local Post Office closes.

 

But the main idea of the piece seems to be how university education that was opened up after WWII for the likes of Rob and Tina saw them move away – not just physically, but in terms of class too. Flo and Jack are very much still working class, but their son and daughter have become very much middle class. The contrasts in their speech/accents reflect this.

 

The elderly couple rely for help – and company – on local character Rhubarb Eddie and vet’s nurse Pamela, Flo’s niece.

 

It’s funny – very much a two-hour sitcom – you have a sense what you’re getting with the first entrance: on a Stannah stairlift. There are running gags and word play, such as Flo getting ‘prostate’ confused with ‘prostrate’ – and it’s arguably at its best when she and Jack are bickering.

 

But in general, it all feels rather directionless. The characters of Tina and Rob are sketches and the subplot – like so much else here – is never really resolved.

 

What saves To Have and to Hold are, first, the performances (more of that in a moment) and James Cotterill’s absolutely magnificent set – a beautifully naturalistic and detailed living room (with front door, back door, stairs, and a serving hatch from the kitchen. All very retro and all with a sense of a home that has been loved and nurtured.

 

It’s quite a static play, and directing duo Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson do a good job keeping as much movement in it as possible.

 

But yes – the performances. Adrian Hood as Rhubarb Eddie is a vast man mountain (he was Norman, the bread delivery man in dinnerladies, but I had no idea just how big he is!) and is very funny and affectionate in the role. Hermione Gulliford (Tina), Christopher Fulford (Rob) and Rachel Dale (Pamela) do sterling service with limited help from the script. 

 

Marion Bailey was apparently a late casting replacement as Flo and that simply makes one admire what she does here even more. It’s a very good performance.

 

But the reason I booked (perhaps ironic given the subjects of age, infirmity etc) for my first live performance since The Other Half died in September, was Alun Armstrong, who plays Jack here.

 

He’s not – that I’m aware of – done much stage work in recent years. Having become aware of him first via the televised version of the RSC’s epic production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (he played Wackford Squeers), I’d seen him on stage in the 56-performance West End musical The Baker’s Wife(revival next year!), as the Olivier-winning, eponymous Sweeney Todd in the magnificent 1993 National Theatre chamber opera version of the Sondheim classic, and then as Willy Loman in the National’s 1996/’97Death of a Salesman.

 

He should have won again for that too, in my opinion. I saw it – as a reviewer – in the Lyttleton stalls and wept absolute buckets.

 

In 1998, he was appearing as the editor in The Front Page at the Donmar Warehouse. As part of my long-term project to get The OH to see actors I very seriously rated, we got tickets. Hildy was played by Griff Rhys Jones, who was very good. Armstrong’s character, editor Walter Burns, makes his first appearance about half way through the three-act piece.

 

Around five minutes after Armstrong had arrived on the Donmar stage, Tony leaned into to me (he was sitting on my right) and said: “I get it”.

 

This is the first time I’ve seen him live since, so thanks so much to a friend for alerting me to this production. 

 

It is an absolute joy to see him back on stage. His comic timing is simply superb. But he also gives the piece its most genuinely emotional moments – Armstrong, who never had a formal theatre training, has real heft as an actor. He can go from making you laugh to making you blub in moments. One of the finest actors of his generation. 

 

So, in summary: the play is slight (very), but it’s important to note that that’s not necessarily bad. Set – brilliant. Cast – all of them do wonders with slight material. Alun Armstrong? Absolutely every bit as fabulous as the last time I saw him on stage.

A killer of a film ... if you've not watched the genre extensively

David Fincher’s new film, The Killer, is based on a French graphic novel and centred on an unnamed contract killer, played by Michael Fassbender.

It opens in Paris, where the eponymous assassin is stationed in an empty building opposite a posh hotel, waiting for his target to arrive. Narrated by The Killer himself, he explains his processes, the “logistics” of the what he does and his philosophy – essentially, that he must have no empathy whatsoever and that, in a world where few are able to be at ‘the top’, he has chosen to be one of those.

But when the contract arrives, it all goes pear shaped and The Killer must take action fast if he is to escape.

From then on, as his own life is threatened, he can no longer play by his own rules, but has to improvise.

The film has had mixed reviews – primarily because many reviewers note that the ‘cold-blooded contract killer’ has been done many times before – sometimes better and sometimes worse.

For me, that wasn’t a problem – I’ve not even seen The Day of the Jackal all the way through – so it never felt like a rehash of something I’ve seen countless times before.

Fassbender is utterly chilling – most particularly in the long opening scenes where he’s waiting and preparing – his face, physicality and voiceover mesmerising. I have seen reviews that regard the narration, which carries on throughout the film, as ‘pretentious’, but for me, it worked very well and helps illustrate just how much the character has cut himself off from humanity.

Or has he?

Part of the fun here is seeing where, in the circumstances in which he finds himself, he breaks his own ‘code’. And whether he really is as utterly emotionless as he likes to claim.

Erik Messerschmidt’s cinemaphotography is striking. The use of tracks by The Smiths throughout – The Killer finds their music helps him concentrate – should perhaps make one want to slit one’s own wrists, but (and I am no Smiths fan) I think it works really well here, with more than a hint of the ironic.

As already said, you can’t take your eyes off Fassbender. Kerry O’Malley is really good as the secretary to a lawyer, but Tilda Swinton, in a cameo late in the film is simply … well, Tilda Swinton! She absolutely crackles and brings humour to the film – albeit it in a very dark form.

So my very personal take is that it’s worth seeing on a big screen – it’s distributed by Netflix, is on at only a select number of cinemas (I saw it at a Curzon) and is streaming now – but if you’ve seen lots of those ‘cold-blooded contract killer’ movies, you might not be as impressed as I was. 

It’s so much not my usual type of film – and I really wondered whether it would be too violent for me. I can’t watch much of The Sopranos or Deadwood – even though I completely understand that they are superb works of TV drama – because the violence (physical and language-wise) becomes overwhelming for me after a short while.

Here, Fincher has made a violent film that reminds me of The Silence of the Lambs, in that the actual violence itself is clear – and not remotely celebrated – but also not filmed in ways so as not to make it gratuitous.

I’d also note that, at 118 minutes, it’s really tight and not self-indulgent in an era when many films seem to come from a starting point of having to be over two hours.

A much-needed examination of gender identity

Given how much trans people have been weaponised for the sake of the culture wars, it feels like an extraordinarily brave thing for award-winning Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren to make her feature film debut with a story about a young trans girl exploring her gender identity.

Brave – and necessary. Solaguren – who also wrote the script for 20,000 Species of Bees – was inspired by the suicide of a 16-year-old trans boy Ekai Lersundi in 2018.

Here, we find a family that lives in the French Basque Country. The parents are on the cusp of splitting up and of the children (teenage Nerea, 10-year-old Eneko and eight-year-old Aitor) the boys seem to constantly fight, while Aitor – also known as the less gender specific Cocó – is clearly unhappy and constantly acting up.

Their mother Ane takes the children with her for an extended summer holiday in the Basque Country south of the Pyrenees, where they will stay with her mother, Lita. Gorka, their father, stays at home.

Ane has allowed Cocó to wear their hair long and use blue nail polish, and they are quietly pleased when the local old ladies congratulate Lita on having a lovely granddaughter, but the conservatively religious grandmother nags her daughter to go to a hairdresser and get Cocó a “boy cut”.

 

Wary of local children, Cocó increasingly spends their days with Aunt Lourdes – a local ‘wise’ women, who lives alone, keeps bees and uses them to cure neighbours of a variety of ailments. There, they start to open up, often describing themselves (unprompted) as behaving like a girl.

 

They question what went “wrong” with them in their mother’s womb and why they are “like this”.

 

But Lita is becoming more strident in her approach, trotting out tired clichés about Ane having over-indulged the child, and the great patriarchal one that the problem is that Cocó is surrounded by women (which doesn’t seem to have changed Eneko’s gender identity).

 

Ane is confused about the issue – but also hits back at her mother, who had done nothing to tackle a dirty little family secret about her late husband, a sculptor.

 

Cocó prays to become Lucía – and even asks her aunt if she can’t die and come back as a girl.

 

Essentially an all-female ensemble piece – it won an award for the best female ensemble cast at the Guadalajara International Film Festival – it’s moving, yet never mawkish or sentimental, and is tackled with great sensitivity and humanity.

 

To help ensure accuracy, Naizen, a regional association for the families of transgender children, worked with Solaguren and provided guidance for Sofía Otero, who plays Lucía.

 

Otero carries the film on her eight-year-old shoulders – a simply outstanding performance that saw her become the youngest ever winner of the Silver Bear for best leading performance at the 73^rd Berlin International Film Festival in February, just one of many awards that the piece has already garnered. In September, it was put forward for nomination for next year’s Academy Awards.

 

Patricia López Arnaiz as Ane and Ane Gabarain as Lourdes also turn in superb performances, while Gina Ferrer García’s cinematography is top notch.

 

If you can, do see it. It’s also on Curzon Home Cinema now. It is a film that will stay with you a very long time.

As Solaguren put it in an interview: "The girl does not transform. Throughout the film, she acquires the tools to express who she is. What is transformed is the family."

Sabrina – a troubled Billy Wilder pic that still does it

I've just watched Sabrina for the first time in years. Written, directed and produced by the legendary Billy Wilder, and released in 1954, I'd rather forgotten how good it is.

Humphrey Bogart was cast against type as a respectable, buttoned-up businessman who is trying to stop his thrice-divorced playboy brother (William Holden) from ducking out of an arranged marriage that would profitably cement a deal between their Larrabee family businesses and those of another family ... and running off with the family chauffeur's daughter, played by the eternally glorious Audrey Hepburn in the eponymous role.

But the machinations fail, as Linus Larrabee (Bogart) finds his heart melted by Sabrina and eventually decides to give life a try.

Bogart struggled to get on with Wilder and had little time for Holden.

He'd wanted Lauren Bacall to be cast as Sabrina. Now I adore Bacall, but that would never have worked ... Betty as ingenue? She was light years beyond that by To Have and Have Not, her film debut.

I do wonder if Bogart was not feeling confident in playing a romantic lead and would have hoped to rely on recapturing the on-screen chemistry and wise-cracking of To Have or Have Not and The Big Sleep.

It is not that, but it works – and that includes in the chemistry between Bogart and Hepburn, which is different to that between Bogart and Bacall, but very much still does the job.

Holden does the playboy brother to perfection. Hepburn is ... well, Hepburn. She's an icon for a reason. There is a lightness to her performance and yet utter conviction.

And the supporting cast is delicious – watch out for Ellen Corby as Bogart's chief secretary; she went on to play Grandma Walton in The Waltons.

But two things. First, it's an excellent reminder of just what a great artist Wilder was. Having penned a witty, engaging script – and in spite of difficulties on set (Bogart apparently apologised later to Wilder for his behaviour) – he then drew out of Bogart a genuinely nuanced and critically acclaimed performance – just watch his eyes; this is not a role done by rote.

Second: Bogart was a far better actor than is sometimes assumed. I said 'watch his eyes' for a reason. He's thinking the part, not just saying it. It's almost Stanislavski (granddaddy of 'method' acting).

And to conclude ... Wilder's ending is an understated, funny, brilliant joy.

I'm delighted to learn that, in 2002, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

A superb history of trans and non-binary lives

Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam is a remarkable achievement. First published last year and now out in paperback, it is an attempt to map out a history of trans and non-binary people – not just within the white West, but taking in cultures around the world.

Heyam works scrupulously to avoid imposing contemporary, white Western values and ideas about gender onto people from different cultures and living in very different societies (and times), reminding readers that to do so is dangerous in terms of a meaningful understanding of history, but that it also risks colonising – or re-colonising – those lives.

 

It is full of revelatory information. For instance, I had no idea that in Swahili, “all pronouns are gender neutral”. Or that “The Daughters of Bilitis, an American lesbian activist group founded in 1955, described butch lesbians as ‘the worst publicity we can get’.”

 

Records from WWI internment camps on the Isle of Man provide a wealth of information from the German civilians imprisoned there for years with no ‘biological females’.

 

The author explains in detail how, in some cultures, from First Nation to South Asian ones, gender non-conformity is often intrinsically linked to spirituality. No matter how difficult some in the West might find it to understand this, we should not pretend it is not the reality for people who experience gender in such a way.

 

Heyam is also determined that we should not simply assume that in every – and there are plenty – historic example of gender non-conformity, we should assume that the person involved was trans or non-binary.

 

They point out that there could have been motives for being gender non-confirmative that could have involved coercion, the need to make a living and more. But as they point out, it’s also a major likelihood that at least *some* were what we would now describe as trans or non-binary.  

 

Initially, I found it a bit annoying to be reminded of these things quite frequently, but I came to understand the value of such reminders. I read history books on a reasonably regular basis, but have never read one like this, and ultimately it benefits from it. It has helped me think quite seriously about number of things I have not thought through before.

 

But Heyem also hits the proverbial nail right on the head in an understanding of why Western, non-binary people might be easily tempted to appropriate the experiences of non-Western, non-gender conforming people, given the assaults on trans and non-binary people currently being experienced – not least in the US and UK.

 

We need to construct a more nuanced dialogue in order not to appropriate, while still celebrating the range of non-gender conforming lives and understanding that in terms of our own relationship to the wider LGBT+ community.   

 

Heyam Is to be applauded for taking a complex subject and approaching it in such a way as to make it informative, challenging and, as they suggest at the end, ‘kind’, to those in the past as well as those living now and, indeed, those in the future.

 

A very different and valuable history – and one to be heartily recommended.