Building Blocks

Federico Garcia Lorca’s powerful drama “The House of Bernarda Alba” is a difficult play to bring off, and it seems doubly challenging in such a small space as the Vanguard Theatre’s arena-style black box.

The tragic events following the funeral of Bernarda Alba’s husband require emotional size and the creation of a dark, shadowed mood, an aura of desperation and passionate hunger that fans out far beyond the walls of Bernarda’s house. Director Michael D. Musa brings it all off with flying colors in this staging.

Musa has molded a true ensemble cast, perfectly apt for Lorca’s powerful tone poem of repression and hopelessness. His tempos crisp, giving the drama an immediacy and urgency it doesn’t always have. Conducting the action almost as if it were a piece of chamber music, Musa creates an individualistic world that plays hand-in-hand with Lorca’s intent.

From the startlingly rigid blaring trumpet effect of Alexandra Robertson’s Bernarda to Anisa Olazabal’s richly detailed, acquiescent and bumbling First Servant, there is no misstep in tone. Penelope VanHorne’s garrulous picador of a housekeeper, La Poncia, is larger than life but absolutely right in her fawning criticism of Bernarda’s treatment of her daughters.

The five daughters have only one hope: finding husbands to remove them from Bernarda’s thralldom. Only Angustias (Lorianne Hill) has lucked out, with her sizable dowry. Her fiance, Pepe Romano, is more interested in the lovely Adela (Wendy Abas). He leaves his distracted conversation at Angustias’ bedroom window at 1 a.m. and is seen exiting Adela’s bedroom three hours later. This is the crux of the drama, along with the petty jealousies, bickering about Pepe and antagonism among the sisters.

Flavia Saravalli, Stefanie Williamson and Patricia J. Francisco are the other daughters and, along with Hill and Abas, they have evolved tightly knit characterizations of burning melancholy.

Evelyn C. Canedy neatly sidesteps a tendency to overdo the equally soulful madness of Bernarda’s aged mother, who often escapes her locked room to seek the young love she believes still awaits her, like the symbolic wild stallion that kicks the side of Bernarda’s house in a passionate attempt to bolt into a more favorable world.

BE THERE

“The House of Bernarda Alba,” Vanguard Theatre, 699A S. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m. Ends April 11. (714) 526-8007. $13-$15. Running time: 1 hours, 50 minutes.