In 2017 Billie Piper’s much lauded performance in Simon Stone’s adaptation of Lorca’s Yerma resulted in her scooping several best actress awards. The opportunity to see this production and much Piper’s written of performance came in the form of an NT Live screening at Altrincham’s Garrick Theatre and I am genuinely thrilled I went.
The play opens with Her (Piper) and her husband John (Brendan Cowell) celebrating the purchase of their first home together in London. Life is going well for them. She is in her early thirties and is a successful lifestyle blogger and he is in his early forties and enjoying growing success and significant worldwide travel for the business he has started with her support. Their plans for the future are taking shape and this large empty new home awaits the life they wish to fill it with. Art, sculpture, beautiful furniture, all mod cons and a child. Her makes it clear she is ready. Her womb awaits an occupant and John agrees his wife’s desire and symbolically crushes her contraceptive pills into the plush cream carpet that no parent of a small child would ever consider.
Arranged on the traverse, Lizzie Cochlan’s impressive set presents a glass box within which the actors perform. Audience are seated either side as they observe the goldfish bowl life played out within it. It is sharp, it has clean lines, subtle reflections and successfully creates a world of its own. We feel like voyeuristic observers of the chapters of their private lives, emphasised by the overlapping dialogue and language of those within it. Breaks between scenes plunge the space into darkness and are accompanied by the disjointed and cacophonous score of Stefan Gregory. New characters and settings emerged within the box from the darkness and on more than one occasion I genuinely thought ‘How on earth did they do that?’
Time passes, sometimes large chunks of it, other times, mere moments, but what unfolds is a woman’s growing obsession to become pregnant and the growing effect of her failure to do this on her mental health. Translated from Spanish, Yerma means barren. A word that has only fairly recently stopped being used to describe a woman unable to have children. Barren, an empty vessel, unfulfilled, of no value or purpose. Her shares the joy of her sister Mary’s pregnancies and births, sympathises with Mary’s miscarriage and unhappy marriage; but her honesty about how she really feels takes its toll on the relationship. She becomes frustrated at her husband’s long and regular absences and the effect of this on her attempts to conceive and blame soon permeates their union leading to tragic consequences. After 12 failed IVF cycles resulting in considerable debt and crisis, John refuses to continue on their painful path to parenthood and Her’s agony is laid bare.
Piper’s transformation from happy, intelligent, successful woman to empty vessel is performed with astonishing detail and distress and the plaudits she received at the time of production are well understood. It is this transformation which takes the emphasis of Stone’s adaptation and given that Lorca often placed a woman’s journey and the centre of many of his works, seems to me to be the right choice.
My only disappointment, in what was otherwise a gripping, moving and impressive theatrical experience, was the low audience numbers. Altrincham Garrick is a wonderful local theatre producing consistently excellent work, imaginative and relevant programmes and has a welcoming and warm atmosphere for patrons. It is a credit to them that they are including screenings of important and impressive national productions to their repertoire, and I would encourage local audiences to take the opportunity to see and support them.
Reviewer: Lou Kershaw
Reviewed: 3rd November 2023
North West End UK Rating: