Yerma - Young Vic / Cinema

To continue the People, Places and Things comparisons from earlier – watching Yerma, I think I felt how the people who (wrongly) dismissed Macmillan’s script felt about that – bravura performance, but what’s the point?

That’s a bit mean on this. This was a game of two halves, and I was rather sucker-punched (if not devastated) by the final three chapters. But there was a major issue of slightness and factual errors that made the first two thirds unbearably so-so (an issue which Parsley gets right to the heart of – we mock him, but when he’s right he’s right), and ultimately brought a slightness to an ending that should have been devastating. And before I begin, I ought to say that I don’t know this Lorca at all, so I’m attributing all its faults to Stone – that said, this is clearly his baby and he’s clearly rewritten heaps, so I think that’s fair, esp. the ending.

Part One: Let’s Get Pregnant with Paige Britain! Yerma, our protagonist, is a bizarrely written character. As a blogger, there’s a Katie Hopkins shock-jock meanness to her (which I felt came across as over-forced and artificial) that makes her rather grating; as a person, Stone (or Lorca?) doesn’t give her depth, and this undermines her theatrical existence. Because the play only really shows us the side of her which is wanting a baby, she becomes one-dimensional when that’s all we get for 1hr45 – for once, a show could be longer: expand Yerma’s life outside this one aspect, show the whole woman not merely the prospective mother. Other than that it’s a tedious Generation Game conveyer belt of Buzzwords (Whatsapp me, Sadiq’s mayor now, avocado – buzzwords incorporated a posteriori, not from inside the box), stringing together “I want a baby I want a baby I want a baby” – the modernity feels phoney and the baby-craving flimsy. Aspects – the family relationship, the job itself – hint at the depth this could have had, and that would have been rather wonderful, but instead it’s over-simple and over-repetitive and needs some more. I mean, we never even know why Yerma wants a baby; the only reason Stone or Piper gives us is “because she wants to, because she wants to”.

And on the subject of blogs – WHERE IS THEIR MONEY COMING FROM? Buying London houses is no issue to a blogger; blogging apparently makes you Midas. Oh, and also, I know that him not getting his sperm tested is for dramatic/character purposes – about pride and masculinity and all that – but practically, Brendan Cowell stringing loved ones on for years out of stubbornness just makes him a dislikeable arse, end of; dramatically it takes the edge off as he becomes one-dimensional too and quite unpleasant, and this makes it somewhat unbelievable at times.

Part Two: a very Danish Dogme downfall. And blimey does the tone rise. Stone has taken influence from the Dogme school of filmmaking before (most specifically (he mentioned this himself) The Daughter), and with how he updates and depicts Yerma’s depression, he takes the largest leaf out of the book of Lars von Trier – a great feminist at best, a great misogynist at worst, often somehow the same thing at the same time, one of the most problematic but fascinating writers of woman characters working today. Having simplified Yerma down to nothing but a mother, to take the potentiality of motherhood away from her empties her out, leaves a void, leaves a woman bereft of identity and purpose and connections; in how explicit, full-on and devastating this self-imposed emptiness was, I was very much reminded of Bjork belting her sorrows away in Dancer in the Dark, of Nicole Kidman’s treatment in Dogville, and particularly (not least due to how, and where, Yerma inflicts violence upon herself in its final moments) of Charlotte Gainsborough dismantling herself first mentally and then physically in Antichrist. As I saw the ending’s reading of women as mothers, Antichrist does rather seem a reference point (not least that that film, too, has a terribly boring first half). And whilst (as with von Trier) there are histrionics and contrivances, I think the strength of Piper’s performance makes her desperate descent into profound loneliness utterly heartbreaking. And, crucially, ‘baby talk’ is relatively relegated – the end is simply a heartbroken woman lacking what she wants, the baby a mere macguffin, and if her heartbreak doesn’t break your heart, you must be made of Stone stone.

Billie Piper seems to be doing a Mark Gatiss – not letting her populism get in the way of becoming a stunning stage actor. The Effect was a layered piece of underplaying as required, her Paige Britain was infinitely better than the play she was in, and now this! Were she not a Doctor Who alumnus, we’d be praising her as a unique talent of the stage, so let’s. It’s nice that she’s part of this brigade shattering high/low, populist/niche culture distinctions, simply by being very very very good at her job (James Mcavoy’s another example). Even at the play’s most annoying (Stone’s writing), she’s convincing to a fault, and as the play drags Yerma down to self-inflicted humiliation, self-doubt and that act of violence, Piper just stuns (to flog my dead horse, look at the performances von Trier gets from great actress in passionate/humiliating roles). She’s been very good before, but this brings out unlikeable, naked layers which are quite painful to watch in ways few actresses are, it’s really something.

So when the script gives her meat, Piper is brilliant, and when the script doesn’t, she’s still brilliant. It’s a shame the script is only half-brilliant. In The Wild Duck, Stone’s detached observation worked because his script had heart, his empathy for Hedvig and Gregers was palpable and we were on their side from step one; that he turned Ibsen’s Sophoclean intellectual decline into a modern kitchen-sink drama heightened the impact of the downfall because Stone had brought Ibsen down to earth. Here, I don’t think Stone sets up the Sophoclean decline well or believes in the issues affecting the character that much (which may be Lorca’s fault?). The Wild Duck was observational where this was clinical; we’re outside Yerma’s head, outside her heart, never able to explore what’s driving her all this time, and that means motivation is replaced by that pat modernity, where in The Wild Duck motivation was enhanced by organic modernity. The ending is amazing, the live Dogme drama something to behold, and the acting is top notch. The beginning just sags, which brings the ending down. If Stone had given Yerma a rounder, richer life from the beginning, this would be a two-hour-plus drama of profound humanity with an utterly devastating ending, but as it is it’s a slight 1hr45 study of an over-simplified protagonist given far more depth than she deserves by a wonderful, wonderful central knock-out performance.