Green, green, green. Everything on stage is the same shade of eau de Nil in the NT’s version of Federico García Lorca’s classic, The House of Bernarda Alba. All the furniture and props are green. The mirrors, the walls, the crucifixes, the clocks and even the bucket and the knife-rack bear the same queasy pigment. The idea, perhaps, is to suggest a lunatic asylum or an NHS waiting room.

Lorca’s steamy tale is set in a remote Spanish village in the 1930s where life is dominated by the repressive and superstitious Catholic church. The story opens with a nasty matriarch, Bernarda Alba, celebrating her husband’s death by ordering her five unmarried daughters to spend the next eight years indoors, doing embroidery. No visitors are allowed. No excursions are permitted – except to Sunday mass, where even a glance at a male parishioner is forbidden. Bernarda Alba’s decree is half-tragic, half-farcical and the script usually develops into a tense family thriller as the daughters rise up against their freakish, domineering mother. Here, the drama is ill-focused and needlessly complicated.

The captive daughters keep undressing, constantly. No idea why

The Lyttelton’s overlarge playing area has been mishandled by the director, Rebecca Frecknall, who wants to fill every available inch of space with stage business. The main action unfolds in a cramped downstairs room which is surmounted by two storeys of dormitory cubicles where the captive daughters spend their evenings alone. They’re seen masturbating, drinking stolen wine, or sniffing the garments of imaginary lovers. They undress, constantly. Every few minutes they tug off their sombre black daywear and climb into fluffy white pyjamas. No idea why. One of the sisters gets into a bath fully clothed and then removes her damp garments and puts on her nightie.

There’s no purpose to these solitary mime-shows. It’s like watching a set of actors learning to juggle in separate padded cells. The soundtrack features bongs and chimes overlaid by a lot of throaty wheezing provided by an unseen man. This could be Pepe el Romano, a half-naked bodybuilder, who enjoys his role as the village stud. One of the daughters, who claims to have inherited some money, boasts that she plans to marry this prancing heart-throb.

Pepe el Romano spends his afternoons shoving his meaty fingers through the garden railings and groping whichever daughter happens to be passing. And in this production, he seems to have gained access to the house as well, and cavorts from room to room in slow-motion, doing kung fu poses. Who let him in? At one point he emerges from beneath the dinner table, during grace. Perhaps Pepe el Romano is a cat burglar or a mime artiste with a local authority grant.

What a muddle this show is. All the tragic elements are ludicrous and all the farcical elements are tedious. Poor Harriet Walter plays the matriarch as a mirthless dictator, but she can’t do anything else because the character never changes. Her funereal costume is topped by a grey quiff that makes her look like Alvin Stardust. At the climax, she grabs the family rifle and fires a few pot-shots at her enemies through the kitchen window – and misses. ‘Women can’t shoot straight,’ she jokes. That funny and revealing line has been cut because it might indicate ‘internalised female misogyny’ or something. The play closes with all the womenfolk shrieking, mewling, honking and sobbing hysterically. What’s more misogynistic than that?

The show is plainly exploitative, so why did nobody raise any objections?

Feeling Afraid as If Something Terrible is Going to Happen examines the busy sex life of a gay stand-up comic. The show is the work of Marcelo Dos Santos, who wrote the amusing royal farce Backstairs Billy, and it opens with the comic reciting part of his stand-up routine. He makes a joke about the clientele at Wetherspoons being ‘sad and a bit racist’. That’s not a gag, obviously. It’s just a coded signal to the crowd that the stand-up shares their fashionable prejudices.

The comic meets a handsome American dreamboat, Zac, who has perfect teeth and muscly arms ‘like a Disney prince’. He seems too good to be true as he’s not a proper dramatic character but a convenient vessel for a disease the author wants to mock. Zac has catalepsy, a substrain of narcolepsy, that may lead to paralysis or death if the victim experiences a nervous surprise like a burst of laughter or a fit of weeping. That’s the premise of the show: can Zac survive an affair with a comedian who keeps cracking jokes?

It’s an intriguing idea but it violates the cardinal rule that no disabled person may be teased or humiliated for the enjoyment of paying spectators. The show is plainly exploitative so why did nobody raise any objections? Well, the author is a gay, urban northerner with a non-British surname so he’s armed with the rich and reassuring plumage of moral impregnability. Lucky chap. He gets a free pass.