A trip to the theatre - Yerma.
Now I’ve landed in my 30’s I reckon I’m ready to try some more grown up type stuff. So 1st on my list - a trip to the theatre.
The last time I went to the theatre was around 6-7 years back when I took Sarah to see Fame in the West End for a birthday “treat”. It was far from high brow but none the less I found the whole experience pretty dreary.
Still, time has passed and when the chance came to give it another bash it thought, “why not?” After all I’ve enjoyed things like #BettaKultcha recently so perhaps my tastes have become more sophisti(ma)cated and my horizons broadened?
So Yerma; a Spanish Tragedy written in the 1930’s (thankfully adapted into English for this incarnation) about a young women desperate but unable to conceive a child and as a consequence, going slowly mad - there’s nothing like breaking yourself in gently!
The cast did feature a few familiar faces off the tele - particularly the lass that plays Alisha in Channel 4’s Misfits (Antonia Thomas) - so perhaps it wouldn’t be as full on as I feared.
Opening with Yerma prancing around stage with little, if anything, in the way of staging/props I feared the worst - a full on thesp-fest of the highest order! Low and behold though, an hour passed and I could barely belief we’d hit the interval! Yerma was beginning to show signs of madness and at various points in the hour I had even laughed out loud (I think in the right places). This wasn’t bad!
The second part (act?) began with more action than the first. It’s 3 years on and still without child, Yerma, her husband Juan and “The sisters” are all present on stage to have a ding dong about Yerma’s midnight wanderings and possible infidelities.
From there on the intensity of the play continued to be ratcheted up with Yerma becoming more and more manic and more and more desperate before the final, climatic scene - which I won’t spoil for those of you that fancy seeing it for yourselves (there was a green scarf and and dead husband involved).
So an evening of my life I’ll never get back but in truth I wouldn’t want it. I doubt very much that I’ll become a regular theatre goer but I have to admit to enjoying the experience more than I’d expected and leaving with a new found appreciation of the work that goes into putting on this sort of a show.
In this particular play, the lead character of Yerma, played by Kate Stanley-Brennan, must have put massive demands on the actress - both mentally and physically - she was barely off stage for the whole 2 hours and when she wasn’t running around like a demented madwomen, she was shouting, crying and at one point, flinging herself into a massive bath of cold water! As Sarah put it, “I bet she’s knackered after that!”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyplayhouse/sets/72157626017016842/show/
