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.
