At Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company, Melia Bensussen’s staging of Melinda Lopez’s translation/adaptation of Yerma is a largely intellectualized take on a passionate folk tragedy. Present day matter-of-factness sits uncomfortably with the script’s incantatory, even pagan elements, bringing the play down to earth instead of letting it soar. Put it this way: If you like your Garcia Lorca with enough pent-up ferocity to blow the lid off the playhouse, this is not the Yerma for you.
Lorca’s melancholy fable tells of a childless wife (Nadine Malouf) whose very name is a corruption of the Spanish for “barren.” Unable to meld body, blood and soul with her husband, yet unwilling to compromise her honor by conceiving with a lover, she’s led to a final unspeakable act, maybe even an inexplicable one but one which must strike us as somehow tragically logical.
The plot touches on so many themes—religious, psychological, cultural, metaphysical, even economic in its awareness of money’s role in defining the warp and woof of village life—that it can be, and has been, interpreted in multiple ways, often at considerable risk. Last year, Simon Stone’s modernized, urbanized version took London and New York by storm with Billie Piper in a “blistering,” “monumental” performance, “like an uncertain colt prancing free through the pasture” (as per New York Stage Review).
No prancing takes place in Bensussen’s production, which takes few risks. Keying off of Lopez’s plain-spoken, modern-tinged text, the incoming artistic director of Hartford Stage keeps the action clear and even obvious, but also safe. Malouf is touching in the opening scenes, evoking with Christian Barillas (strong as husband Juan) a seemingly stable marriage, and then with Marianna Bassham (fetching as neighbor Maria) a friendly rapport between two, as they believe, pregnant girlfriends.
But these are largely naturalistic encounters. With the revelation of Yerma’s barrenness and her husband’s neglect, her obsessions take over and the words start to make poetic leaps. Yet Malouf remains firmly within her earlier vocal patterns and emotional fabric. There’s little variety in her physicalization, a sameness that’s echoed in the metronomic pacing of the choral odes and the predictably sauntering patterns of the ensemble’s entrances and exits. (Mark Bennett’s original flamenco score, though performed live, isn’t sufficiently integrated into the action to make much of a difference.) When a theatrical device is introduced, it seems obvious (a blue cloth representing water) or off-kilter (actor Ernie Pruneda as a dream bull inspired by Yerma’s lost love), and tepid either way.
For all Lorca’s textual references to the four classic elements—earth, fire, water, air—it’s the last that dominates, especially the air within internal pauses and delayed cue pickups. The notion of acting on verse lines rather than between them has not caught on with this company. Only the distinguished stage veteran Alma Cuervo, as the crusty, crafty village elder Incarnación, finds a satisfying balance between naturalness and ritual. She offers sympathetic advice one minute, and one of her sons as a lover the next; the character needs to surprise us at all times, and Cuervo does just that. She possesses the earthy fierceness that would seem to be a necessary condition of any Yerma, but is in short supply here.
Yerma opened June 13, 2019, at the Huntington Theatre Company (Boston, MA) and runs through June 30. Tickets and information: huntingtontheatre.org
