• Yerma (National Theatre Live)

9/30/18 (Sun), Tokyo

A liberal adaptation of the famed Lorca play of 1934. A woman who waited too long to have a child (she aborted one at 23 to her then-boyfriend’s sorrow) is now feeling the biological clock, and her unsuccessful efforts to make her body do her bidding make her increasingly obsessed. She gets battier and battier until she is finally utterly deranged. And that pretty much sums it up.

Her name here is, well, Her, a curious alternative to Lorca’s more suggestive Yerma (meaning barren in Spanish).

Director Simon Stone skillfully updates the show from the Spanish countryside to London of the here and now, convincingly incorporating cell phones, blogging, up-to-date references to celebrities and such. The problem is the characterization. The woman’s descent into madness is overwrought and simply not credible as portrayed here. We only see her brooding at home, but what the heck was she doing in her company all day? This doesn’t feel like a real person in the least. She also writes a blog that tells how she hoped her pregnant sister would miscarry, about her husband’s alleged erectile dysfunction and such, making not only her own life but other lives transparent (with the encouragement of her assistant, recalling Dear Evan Hansen). Are we supposed to like her? Pity her? I haven’t the slightest idea. This is a world that can only exist on stage. The elements were there for an exploration of woman’s difficulty in the modern world, but it was too interested in dramatic effects to create a well-rounded character or realistic situation.

An odd tidbit: “Her” reveals that she shaves her pubic hair but leaves her armpit hair intact. Yuk. That must be symbolic of something.

The show did benefit from terrific performances from the entire cast. Billie Piper was an unstoppable force as Her; she looked exhausted at the curtain call. It was an amazing performance. Brendan Cowell was superb as the husband, and John MacMillan and Scot-inflected Maureen Beattie offered wonderful support as the ex-boyfriend and mother.

The most impressive part of the show was the set, which was enclosed in a glass case dividing the audience in two, like watching a fishbowl or test tube. The show was divided into “chapters” with titles projected onto the glass, and had full-scale lightning-fast set changes in the darkness that seemed almost impossible. It was extremely impressive, contributing immeasurably to the production’s flow. A dazzling concept extremely well executed.

In the end, though, when you come out talking about the sets, there’s a problem. This felt like watching a show instead of life, with a potentially interesting theme lost in the eagerness to shock. I don’t understand the universal kudos for this play, despite the strong cast and creative direction.