BWW Reviews: THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA, King's Head Theatre, June 8 2014

The heat is pervasive. So too the austere authority of Bernarda, the matriarch who rules her five daughters with a rod of iron - well, literally with the rod of wood that she uses to beat them. Yet what affects these women most is not the oppression of the Spanish midday sun, nor that meted out by a crazy, class-obsessed 60 year old woman - their lives are consumed by the absence of men.

But they're not quite absent - men parade past their house on the way to the fields, their songs fill the quiet stillness of the afternoon and some come to their windows to woo them. And some do rather more than that. The five sisters, imprisoned psychologically as much as physically, turn their frustrations into words that they spit at each other, especially when the most eligible bachelor in the village makes it known that he intends to marry the eldest and, therefore, the financially most secure sister Angustias, and not the flighty, but beautiful, youngest sister Adela.

Nesba Crenshaw is a terrifying Bernarda, a real-life Cruella Deville, whose pinched features speak to her narrow view of the world and her cane to her still appallingly effective physicality, her voice never less than a slightly toned down shriek, as she dominates her daughters mercilessly. Hannah Wood invests the hunchbacked Martirio with so much pathos that one can almost, but not quite, forgive the unspeakable acts her jealousy of Adela provokes - it's a nuanced and moving performance. Best of this tremendous cast is Jenny Wilford, who delivers a compelling and tragic Adela, her eyes never still, her ache of sexual desire (and human comfort) always present, her fate never in doubt. It's not too much to ask for an actor to fill this tiny stage, but she fills our hearts too, despite Adela's childish casual vindictiveness - the significant challenge of playing the role in this most intimate of venues fully met.

Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba (continuing on Sundays only at the King's Head Theatre until 29 June) is as painful to watch now as it was when it was written in 1936, just two months before he was shot, probably by Franco's men. Lorca's was too powerful a voice for the man as ruthless as Mrs Alba, the General ruling a country at heartlessly as she ruled a family. You wonder how the combination of class structures, hypocritical patriarchy and religious fervour produced such cruelty then - and how it continues to do so in so many parts of the world today.

The House of Bernarda Alba continues on Sundays only at the King's Head Theatre until 29 June.