Yerma

by Simon Stone after Federico Garcia Lorca

seen by live streaming from the Young Vic on 31 August 2017

Simon Stone directs his own radical re-working of Lorca's play, with Billie Piper as 'Her', Brendan Cowell as her partner John, Maureen Beattie as her mother Helen, Charlotte Randle as her sister Mary, John Macmillan as her ex-boyfriend Victor and Thalissa Teixeira as her friend Des.

The original play, written in 1934, is set in rural Spain where Yerma, a farmer's wife, is unable to bear a child in a society where childbearing is central to a woman's identity and value. It is quite a jump - but in the event largely a successful one - for Simon Stone to have reset this predicament in contemporary London (with some up-to-the-minute references to current politics), where it might be imagined that the issue of childbearing is less fraught by crippling social mores. Billie Piper's character, no longer given a name, is bubbly, self-assured, flirtatious with her indulgent partner, either unaware of or unfazed by his self-absorbed approach to intimate relationships. Only as they celebrate moving into a new (large) home in an up-and-coming but still affordable part of London, and she announces that they should think of having a child, are there hints that the two might have awkwardly different views about the prospect.

Life of Galileo

by Bertolt Brecht translated by John Willett

seen at the Young Vic on 7 June 2017

Joe Wright directs Brendan Cowell as Galileo with a supporting cast of ten in this didactic play concerning the struggle between the scientific mind and the entrenched dogmas of the post-Reformation Catholic church.

Galileo's personality is overwhelming in this play as he exults in his astronomical discoveries and relies on the strength of physical observation of phenomena to underpin the realignment of scientific knowledge. Around him the rich and powerful see only the commercial or entertainment advantages of inventions such as the telescope, rather than its usefulness in discovering shadows on the Moon or moons around Jupiter. His disciples are impressed, his family exasperated, his patrons largely boorish, and the church prelates who happen to be intellectual only dabble in his enthusiasms. Even the Barberini pope, taken to be an ally when he is a cardinal, succumbs to prudential arguments and allows Galileo to be intimidated into silence.