Daily Times

Federico García Lorca described his oft-adapted “La Casa de Bernarda Alba” simply as a “drama of women in the villages of Spain.” But as the Haitian American playwright Diane Exavier knows, whenever women gather – especially during times of mourning – there is always more at stake. Exavier takes inspiration from Lorca’s work to craft “Bernarda’s Daughters,” but she replaces the tyrannical mother of the original with the oppressive smother of a New York City summer. Bernarda – referred to here as Mommy – is never seen but lets her five daughters cycle through the family home in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush as they watch over their grandmother Florence and grieve their recently deceased father. Men remain absent in this play as they do in Lorca’s, and their stench lingers. It’s partly a literal stench, represented by bushels of their father’s laundry the daughters must clean before Mommy returns. But more emblematically, it’s a figurative stink, reeking of the unappreciated sacrifices these women make for their men – especially the eldest daughter, Louise – even long after those men are in the ground.