Word: yerma
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...LOEB MAINSTAGE production of Frederico Garcia-Lorca's Yerma is innovative, ambitious, and disturbing. It is disturbing because the ambition of the production sometimes overshadows the subtlety and acute drama of the play itself. Unabashedly creative and aggressive in its staging, the play doesn't quite succeed because of the unevenness of the production; what at times is exquisitely compelling in its interpretation and performance can quickly turn into an overstatement that is distracting at best...
...music underscores the play's striking visual opening. The curtain rises on a bare stage with the entire cast sitting silently in a semi-circle, representing the suffocating constrictions of the tiny village society Yerma lives in. Yerma (Claudia Silver) lies isolated from the rest of the cast in the middle of half-moon, while a brief film by Carl Sprague flickers over her head...
Silver is one member of the cast who does pull it off. Although her portrayal of an immature, ingenuous Yerma in the beginning of the play is a little distracting with its athletic hops and beauteous smiles, Silver settles down to give a solid performance with stunning interludes. The strength of Silver's performance in her final confrontation with her husband Juan (Paul O'Brien) salvages the final scene: the audience can focus its attention on Silver and try and forget the witches' coven that has convened on the right-hand side of the stage...
...while some of the supporting cast gives excellent and winning performances (among them Alison Taylor and Miriam Schmir), Paul O'Brien in a lackluster and leaden Juan. Pauls Raudseps is equally unexciting as Yerma's possible love interest, and the lack of sexual tension is obvious even as he leers his suggestion as to how she could become pregnant: "Try harder...
...Elaine Bonazzi and Frederica von Stade, Baritone Theodor Uppman and Tenor John Wakefield seemed wasted in their brief roles. Choreographer José Limon certainly knows all there is to know about Spanish tradition and dancing. But even his fertility rite dance in Act III succeeded in looking barren. Musically, Yerma is compelling. But as a dramatic experience, in Santa Fe, Yerma remained yermo...