YERMA. To 22 February.
Manchester
YERMA
by Federico Garcia Lorca adapted by Pam Gems
Royal Exchange Theatre To 22 February 2003
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wed 2.30pm Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 1 February
Passionate, urgent and lyrical: as good a Lorca production as I've ever seen.Helena Kaut-Howson's production, lead by Denise Black's vivid peasant woman, provides an ideal balance of the lyrical and the passionate, the rurally-realistic and the poetic, giving full scope to Lorca's tragedy.
As someone who's generally found English Yerma's febrile and anaemic going on sterile, I can only say: see it, see it, see it. For the thrilling working out of the plot, for its depiction of a woman at once common and glisteringly unique, for its sheer beauty as a piece of ensemble staging.
Black gives Yerma a peasant's physical and mental stolidity. Within the galumphing gait - movement for her has never been about personal elegance but lifting and carrying there's a fidgety quality. Her smile as she congratulates her neighbour Maria on becoming pregnant is a fixed expression. Natural joy in the creation of life, maybe, or politeness hiding her own sense of deprivation. It's Eliot's face prepared to meet the faces that you meet, without the flickers of momentary reactions, and beautifully observed.
So's the voice; occasionally veering to the drawing-room maybe, but helping set her apart and establish her force of character. What's never in doubt is this woman's life-instinct. The early scenes with husband Juan are happy, with Yerma initiating affectionate playfulness. It makes the final murder by the child-denied Yerma more poignant despite the brutality of the determined throttling, strong peasant hands and passions pressing on Juan's windpipe, it's an overflow of natural, stifled instincts.
Designer Simon Higlett provides a dry, restless environment, hard earth in irregular mounds. Juan, the thin, passionless worker belongs to it in Peter Gowen's immaculately restrained, alert performance. Yet midway Yerma finds peace lying on the earth, hearing the distant song of Victor, the man for whom she longs, who leaves as Juan's jealousy is instigated.
But this magical production is more than its central actors The women's songs, the crazy Young Girl's wild freedom, the Pagan Woman's pronouncements, Juan's black-clad sisters, drafted in by his suspicions to keep an eye on his wife: all contribute to the energy. At the public level, the battle between joy and restraint is worked out as the sisters and other women do their washing in the stream. It's a theatrical climax, a vision of how work songs and rhythms originally created dance and drama.
Yerma: Denise Black
Juan: Peter Gowen
Maria: Caoimhe Harvey
Victor: Oliver Haden
Pagan Woman: Anni Domingo
Dolores: Eileen O'Brien
1st Young Girl: Helen Kay
2nd Young Girl/Masked Dancer: Lydia Baksh
!st Woman: Orla Cottingham
2nd Woman: Catriona Martin
3rd Woman: Daniella Dessa
1st Sister: Laura Richmond
2nd Sister: Jill Myers
Shepherd/Masked Dancer: Darren Mercer
Musician: Akintayo Akinbode
Director: Helena Kaut-Howson
Designer: Simon Higlett
Lighting: Jason Taylor
Sound: Peter Rice
Music: Akintayo Akinbode
Movement: Jack Murphy
Dialects: Tim Charrington
Fights: Renny Krupinski
2003-02-06 17:40:55