HOW LONG CAN a woman go on yearning for a child to fill her barren womb before the audience begins yearning to see another dimension of this woman? In Borderlands Theatre's production of Federico García Lorca's play, Yerma, I'd say about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the title character keeps the lamenting going strong for about 90 minutes. That's what the play is about. That's all the play is about.Written by Lorca in the late 1930s, Yerma depicts rural life in Spain where the women have babies and the men herd sheep. According to this play, that's simply all there was to life and to the people existing in it. As a pagan woman tells Yerma, "Good people get out of bed, eat some bread, work hard and die." That may be true, but it doesn't make good theatre.
As the play begins, Yerma and Juan have been married 24 months and have no children. As the play progresses, they've been married three years and have no children, then five years with no children. Get the picture? Yerma yearns and Juan herds.
Yerma and Juan are surrounded by a bunch of equally one-dimensional characters. The women carry babies, talk of babies, and work hard at having babies. And if you can't have a baby, apparently, you have no reason to call yourself a woman and no reason to exist. "Women only have their children and caring for their children," Yerma says. "A country girl that doesn't bear children is as useless as a handful of thorns. I will have one because I must or I don't understand the world."
The supporting cast of men herd sheep and are pretty much insignificant in this play, with the exception of Victor, who is given the significance of being Yerma's true love. (Her marriage to Juan was arranged by her father.)
Fortunately for us, Yerma tells us of her so-called passion for Victor, because we would never guess it by watching the two of them on stage. Yerma is so oppressed by the weight of her infertility, her desire for Victor is muted. And Victor's supposed fancy for Yerma doesn't seep through the averted glances and nervous conversation even a little bit.
Being a childless woman myself and having experienced a yearning now and again, I thought I would find some empathy for Yerma, but at the end of 90 minutes, I was angry that she had been portrayed in such a simplistic, single-minded manner. Women are complex human beings and deserve to be depicted as such--even in the peasant culture of 1930s Spain.
In Psyche and Symbol in the Theater of Federico García Lorca, Rupert C. Allen states, "Lorca has an amazing insight into the woman's spirit." One man telling us how well another man understands women. Can't dispute that, can you?
I'm going to give Lorca the benefit of the doubt here and assume that a good deal was lost, both in language and culture, in the English translation of Yerma by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata.
In spite of excellent acting by Anastasia Coon in the title role, and pretty good acting by Miguel Ortega as Juan, the emotions ring false and empty; serious moments prompt snickers from the audience because they feel simulated; the big, tragic finale is anti-climatic because the play utterly fails to draw us into the situation.
Director Chris Wilken is unable to summon any sincere sentiment from a supporting cast whose acting ranges from mediocre to bad. The one notable exception is Raquel Mogollon who does a fine job in the role of the pagan woman.
Many of Lorca's often poetic verses are recounted as if by freshmen rushing through a poem they had been forced to memorize and recite, and few of the voices project loud enough to be heard beyond the third row without straining.
Deana Radtke's scene design is a surreal, almost futuristic-looking mountain design of shaped wires draped with paper that rattles and crackles each time an actor creates a breeze merely by walking past.
Yerma, co-produced by Borderlands Theatre and Pima Community College Drama Department, will continue with performances in English at 8 p.m. on April 21 and at 1:30 p.m. April 23; and performances in Spanish at 8 p.m. on April 20 and 22 at PCC Center for the Arts, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Tickets are $10 for general admission, $8 for seniors, and $6 for students with ID. For reservations call 882-7406.
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