Anyone who arrives at Park Avenue Armory’s new, London-based staging of Yerma expecting to see Federico García Lorca’s enduringly haunting play will be taken aback by the first scene, in which a young British couple exchange thoughts on eBay, Prada, crack dealers, anal sex, and Boris Johnson.
It would seem we are far from that village in rural Spain where Lorca’s heroine yearned to fill her empty womb and lonely heart. Yet this astonishing adaptation of the 1934 classic, written and directed by Simon Stone and first staged at the Young Vic, manages to address many of the same concerns in a contemporary context, exploring not only the limits of progress but also the fresh challenges it can pose.
Her, as the protagonist of this Yerma is simply called, is a career woman, a blogger and journalist—those terms are not necessarily synonymous here—who is already well into her 30s when we meet her, and lives out of wedlock with her longtime boyfriend, John. A ticking biological clock would appear more of an issue than a fear of dishonoring her family; Her’s father clearly did not choose John as Yerma’s chose Juan, and motherhood has been a burden for Her’s mother, Helen, an academic, and sister Mary, who keeps getting pregnant by an unfaithful husband.
But these factors seem to make Her, a modern woman who has been promised she can make her own choices, and juggle a full personal and professional life, more intent on becoming a mother—and more frustrated as John, like Juan, reveals himself to be physically and emotionally unavailable, despite his protestations.
The character of Her is given remarkable life by Billie Piper, a former teen singer and actress who exudes a luscious, unselfconscious sensuality. In her early scenes—with John, her mom and sister, an ex-boyfriend, a younger colleague—Piper’s honeyed voice, playful wit and relaxed body language suggest a woman who, whatever her quirks, is comfortable in her own skin, aware of her attractiveness but not consumed by it.
The harrowing transition that follows is made starker by Stone’s staging. Lizzie Clachan’s mostly minimalist set encloses the characters in glass walls on a stage that bisects the audience, so that viewers on both sides can study them like laboratory animals in a cage. The design not only reinforces Her’s increasing sense of being trapped, but emphasizes our general vulnerability in a digital age that encourages us to live our lives in public, and be judged accordingly.
Her’s downward spiral is, in its early stages, at least partly documented online, at the urging of a 21-year-old coworker named Des (Thalissa Teixeira, lissome and mischievous). When Her starts chronicling her struggle with infertility on her blog, Des presses her to include “the ugly stuff. The regrets. The nighttime horrors.” Her begins oversharing, eventually dragging John and the kind-hearted Mary (a tenacious Charlotte Randle) into her revelations. More regrets follow.
“I see I’ve joined the ranks of the narcissists,” Her sighs, while Des rejoices in the thousands of hits they’re getting. When Her responds, “People always lap nastiness up,” Des objects to the term: “No. No. Confession. Catharsis. The unrepresented millions. The dark secret brought into the night. This is journalism.”
Stone’s bracing text hardly portrays Her as a simple victim; we see the extent to which her writing and even her attempts at motherhood—which inevitably extend to an expensive and traumatic series of IVF treatments—are rooted in a search for validation, one that can be obsessive and even ruthless. But we also see how John, a thoroughly contemporary breed of bourgeois creep— forever jetting off to court clients abroad, then coming home to join his bros at stag parties—is spared, by both biological and social forces, many of the pressures and tough choices (and lack of choices) that figure into her descent.
“I wanted you,” says John, marvelously played by Brendan Cowell, who captures the scoundrel’s charm and humanity, and how both are tested when Her comes undone. They are married now, but both have reached the end of their ropes. He repeats: “You. To be happy. To be mine.” The obvious omission, not to mention the sense of possession, are more than Her can bear, and this Yerma ends with a tragic flourish that’s tellingly different than the one Lorca used. Were he with us, I suspect, he would approve.
Yerma opened March 28, 2018, at the Park Avenue Armory and runs through April 21. Tickets and information: armoryonpark.org
