Were Critics Kind to Michael John LaChiusa's Bernarda Alba?

Take Federico García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, combine it with musical theater force Michael John LaChiusa, and you have Bernarda Alba, a piece being presented at Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre. Directed and choreographed by Graciela Daniele, the show officially opened on March 6. Did critics enjoy their visit to the house?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Rob Kendt in his Broadway.com Review: "So this is what the fuss is all about. Michael John LaChiusa's Bernarda Alba is nearly all the things he intends it to be, and that a discerning audience might wish it to be, too: a serious and seamless musicalization of Federico Garcia Lorca's forbidding final 1936 masterpiece, The House of Bernarda Alba, given a seductive staging by Graciela Daniele and a passionate, definitive rendition by its all-female cast."

Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "[Bernarda Alba] often feels wan and weary… Neither of these talented actresses [Phylicia Rashad and Candy Buckley], and most of the younger ones who play Bernarda's daughters and servants, seem at ease with Mr. LaChiusa's brooding, flamenco-steeped score… Ms. Daniele's flamenco-ish choreography, too, sometimes leans toward the unintentionally comic. But her story-theater staging makes efficient use of Christopher Barreca's dramatically spartan wooden set, and she keeps the narrative clear… What she does not achieve is the hypnotic aura of fatalism that would keep the audience riveted. Nor does Mr. LaChiusa's music, at least as sung here, avoid a nagging repetitiveness."

David Rooney of Variety: "The proud, muscular rhythms of [flamenco]… together with the jagged, modernist sounds more characteristic of the prolific LaChiusa, make Bernarda Alba a dark and intriguing musical score. But the droning, atonal songs, with their ponderously literal lyrics, are too fragmented to define character or to build emotion or dramatic momentum. As a narrative, the adaptation connects the dots of Lorca's plot efficiently enough. But rather than lending fresh resonance to the tragic tale of a tyrannical widowed mother and her five unwed daughters, the musical interpretation chills and dilutes the fiery passions, bristling tensions and caged sexuality so essential to the play."

Linda Winer of Newsday: "Whatever urgency she [director/choreographer Graciela Daniele] and LaChiusa felt about revisiting the rural hothouse of the tyrannical widow Alba and her five sexually repressed daughters in 1930s Spain, however, we are at a loss to know why. Still, one of the ongoing pleasures of recent theater is Phylicia Rashad… The all-female cast is impressive, looming in dark shadows and throwing tormented torsos into the sweeping, gut-centered choreography as if nobody had ever seen Martha Graham or flamenco. The actresses are expert in LaChiusa's odd melodic lines, the angular yelps, the moody modalities, the vibrato that flutters far back in the throat and--especially--the seductive, hesitation-rhythms, the pounding of leather on wood and flesh on flesh… For all the beauty, we are left with steamy women-in-prison claptrap disguised as serious business."