House That?

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Kevin Berne Photo of The House That Will Not Stand at Berkeley Rep.

 

What’s the advance word on Marcus Gardley’s The House That Will Not Stand, which begins performances April18 at the Yale Rep?

Well, what does the phrase “run extended” mean to you? That’s what happened to the show, a free adaptation of Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba transposed to mid-19th century New Orleans, when it played Berkeley Rep, which is co-producing this world-premiere production. The House That Will Not Stand ended up running from Jan. 31 through March 23.

Some of the reviews were ecstatic—“At the end, the house may not have been left standing, but the audience certainly was,” quoth Anna Pulley in the East Bay Express. Even the reviews that detected flaws in the show were well within the parameters of what world-premieres have to overcome: questions about the consistency of the style, whether comic elements imbalance tragic ones, etc.

Here in New Haven, we’re getting this brand-new show apparently just as it’s found itself.

The play, directed by Patricia McGregor, has the same cast here as it did in California: Joniece  Abbott-Pratt as Odette; Harriett  D.  Foy (who also provided vocal arrangements and original music for the show) as Makeda; Lizan  Mitchell as Beartrice; Petronia Paley as La Veuve and Marie Josephine; Flor De Liz  Perez as Maude Lynn; Ray  Reinhardt as Lazare; Tiffany  Rachelle  Stewart as Agnes. Percussion is provided by Jocelyn Pleasant. The creative team is the same too: Choreography  by Paloma McGregor, scenic  design  by Antje Ellermann,  costumes  by Katherine  O’Neill, lighting by Russell H. Champa, sound  design  and  original compositions by Keith Townsend Obadike.

Marcus Gardley. Patricia McGregor and Keith Townsend Obadike are well-recalled from their days at the Yale School of Drama, where they were all active at the Yale Cabaret. Obadike and his wife Mendi created the interactive new-media opera The Sour Thunder

Tiffany Rachelle Stewart is a more recent YSD grad, from 2007. Katherine O’Neill went there too, designing the costumes for the Charles Dutton rendition of Death of a Salesman and graduating in 2009.

Some didn’t attend the drama school, but are familiar with the theater. Russell Champa did the lighting for two previous Berkeley Rep/Yale Rep co-productions, Dear Elizabeth and Eurydice (both directed by Les Waters).

Gardley’s the big deal here, of course. He’s still in his 30s, and this is his second Yale Rep world premiere; in 2006, the theater did his lower-case drama dance of the holy ghosts. The Yale Summer Cabaret did Gardley’s livin’ tired in 2003, and the school-year Yale Cabaret produced his Moonbith, among other things. Gardley’s best-known plays are And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, Every Tongue Confess and the musical On the Levee.

One thing I remember, as an audience member, about Marcus Gardley’s time at the School of Drama, was how much he made of that school experience. He seemed to volunteer to help every one of his classmates with shows. He was writing constantly. And he prizes teaching as much as he does playwriting. He’s currently a professor of playwriting at Brown.

 

If you’re curious about the source material for The House That Will Not Stand, you can read Jose Garcia Lorca’s play The House of Bernarda Alba here.