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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2016 17:43:30 GMT
And any clues/teases about the wildly exciting?!?
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Post by vdcni on Sept 22, 2016 7:18:50 GMT
Hmmm not sure about this one.
I'd agree, fantastic central performance by Piper with Brendan Cowell giving fine support but I couldn't say I really care for the play itself. It starts well and ends very well but there's a good 20 or so minutes before that where it drags, it just kept on the look how bad their life is now theme when that was already quite clear. Though maybe as a happily childless person it didn't take much for me to think her obsession was extreme. I wasn't completely sold on the rest of the cast but then they didn't have a huge amount to work with other than the mother.
Still glad I saw it and nice to see Cowell being so solicitous to Piper at the curtain call and leading the appluase for her solo bow, I remember her looking shell shocked at the end of The Effect and she did here as well - understandably after that final scene.
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Post by showgirl on Sept 22, 2016 8:00:34 GMT
Very much in line with my thoughts above. Glad I'm not the only partial dissenter.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2016 2:36:42 GMT
Simon Godwin doing another Shakespeare. Did you mean to say Joe Hill-Gibbins? |
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Post by DuchessConstance on Sept 23, 2016 7:31:49 GMT
Oh gosh I genuinely had no idea I'd written that! How weird. Probably because I had both their names in front of me.
The new verbatim play about sex workers is extraordinary btw.
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Post by popcultureboy on Sept 23, 2016 8:24:00 GMT
Regarding the transfer, it would need to be 100% restaged for it, whether Piper is available or not. I don't know of any West End house that would have the wing space for sets, for starters. I would love to see Yerma come in, but it's likelier it will do a Happy Days and they'll bring it back for an encore run at the Young Vic rather than try and squeeze it in to a traditional house, I think slash hope.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 25, 2016 20:16:26 GMT
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.
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Post by popcultureboy on Sept 25, 2016 20:49:46 GMT
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. She's not a self employed blogger, she's employed by some nameless faceless publication to write a column/blog for them. The money is coming from that and mostly from her husband's job, which is why he's never there when she wants him, because he's always working. I don't agree with your sperm testing point either. It wasn't solely for dramatic or character purposes. Some of my friends have had to undertake the beginning of Yerma's journey towards pregnancy and this was essentially true to life. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2016 21:16:15 GMT
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. She's not a self employed blogger, she's employed by some nameless faceless publication to write a column/blog for them. The money is coming from that and mostly from her husband's job, which is why he's never there when she wants him, because he's always working. I don't agree with your sperm testing point either. It wasn't solely for dramatic or character purposes. Some of my friends have had to undertake the beginning of Yerma's journey towards pregnancy and this was essentially true to life. You CANNOT be referred for fertility treatment without the male partner having a sperm count See the NICE guidelines and fertility protocol for any major CCG The male character continually stalling was unbelievable and if not that then simply stupid They will be rationing IVF even further in the NHS shortly making the referral criteria more stringent |
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Post by popcultureboy on Sept 28, 2016 7:40:47 GMT
You CANNOT be referred for fertility treatment without the male partner having a sperm count See the NICE guidelines and fertility protocol for any major CCG The male character continually stalling was unbelievable and if not that then simply stupid They will be rationing IVF even further in the NHS shortly making the referral criteria more stringent Where did I say anything about referral for anything, Parsley? Moreover, where did Yerma? What I did say was I've known friends go through EXACTLY the kind of macho alpha male stalling of testing sperm counts when they're failing to conceive. So therefore, I don't agree with you that this plot point was unbelievable or stupid. |
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Post by kathryn on Sept 28, 2016 9:57:26 GMT
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”. I know you're half-joking here, Nicholas, but - speaking as someone who has never wanted to have children - the reason most people want a baby is basically 'because she wants to'. At least from my perspective, anyway. People don't need any other reason. Indeed, they persist in wanting babies even when it's demonstrably the worst possible thing that could happen at that point in their lives, and they'd be much better off not having them. At some point you just have to chalk it up to biological imperative. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 11:57:42 GMT
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”. I know you're half-joking here, Nicholas, but - speaking as someone who has never wanted to have children - the reason most people want a baby is basically 'because she wants to'. At least from my perspective, anyway. Agreed, and it's part of the reason I wasn't that bothered about booking for this (though I do regret missing what seemed to be another great performance by Piper). As a woman who's blissfully child-free, I get a little tired seeing yet another drama out there about a late 30s/early 40s woman who's desperate for a child. There are other types of late 30s/early 40s women out there, you know, dramatists! (Don't even get me started on the travesty that is ITV's Paranoid.) |
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Post by Polly1 on Sept 28, 2016 12:21:16 GMT
I know you're half-joking here, Nicholas, but - speaking as someone who has never wanted to have children - the reason most people want a baby is basically 'because she wants to'. At least from my perspective, anyway. Agreed, and it's part of the reason I wasn't that bothered about booking for this (though I do regret missing what seemed to be another great performance by Piper). As a woman who's blissfully child-free, I get a little tired seeing yet another drama out there about a late 30s/early 40s woman who's desperate for a child. There are other types of late 30s/early 40s women out there, you know, dramatists! (Don't even get me started on the travesty that is ITV's Paranoid.) Jeanhunt, thank you, you have articulated my situation and thoughts about this play perfectly. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 13:13:55 GMT
s a woman who's blissfully child-free, I get a little tired seeing yet another drama out there about a late 30s/early 40s woman who's desperate for a child. It's the Mumsnet mafia I tell you! Part of their campaign to tell every childless woman that they're incomplete without children and they're not natural if they don't want them! It's relentless!! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 13:54:10 GMT
I too am a blissfully child-free 30-something! More plays with child-free women would be GREAT. Men are allowed to be all sorts of things in plays, but we are almost always considered as mothers or girlfriends before anything else. Just being a person would be nice. Breeders at the St James was a nice play but bothered me a lot, although The Awkward Squad at the Arts Theatre was great, and Jumpy had some good aspects too. I liked Yerma though - for whatever reason, probably the performances, it was a strong enough piece to suggest that this is literally just the one character's journey and thought processes and biological needs, and I never felt that I personally was being judged on any level by the production, because it was so clearly about this one character without her acting as a reflection for all women.
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Post by kathryn on Sept 28, 2016 15:41:11 GMT
It is a great performance - and she is going to win all the awards for it, no doubt at all. But I must confess it left me completely unmoved. A bit of a weird experience, to be honest - I can see that it's good, but personally I just find it completely unrelatable. I imagine for anyone who has been through that situation it will be devastating to watch. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 15:52:40 GMT
I never related to Macbeth until I was tricked by three equivocating witches I met on the blasted heath late one night.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 15:57:53 GMT
Nice point, HG, but come back when society has been telling you from birth that you're a FAILURE AS A MAN unless you've killed a king.  |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 16:02:06 GMT
Well, at university I gave Prince Edward a death stare. But he just laughed.
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Post by kathryn on Sept 28, 2016 22:33:00 GMT
I never related to Macbeth until I was tricked by three equivocating witches I met on the blasted heath late one night. I entirely accept that the 'problem'* is me. *The problem being not being able to relate to the character, rather than not wanting kids. |
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Post by djp on Sept 29, 2016 4:45:48 GMT
I too am a blissfully child-free 30-something! More plays with child-free women would be GREAT. Men are allowed to be all sorts of things in plays, but we are almost always considered as mothers or girlfriends before anything else. Just being a person would be nice. Breeders at the St James was a nice play but bothered me a lot, although The Awkward Squad at the Arts Theatre was great, and Jumpy had some good aspects too. I liked Yerma though - for whatever reason, probably the performances, it was a strong enough piece to suggest that this is literally just the one character's journey and thought processes and biological needs, and I never felt that I personally was being judged on any level by the production, because it was so clearly about this one character without her acting as a reflection for all women. Saw this last wed matinee, and thought Billie was terrific. No justice if she doesn't get some gongs for this . She's so powerful and intense that in some ways its a good thing she's not putting herself through that too many times. I would have thought that this was clearly an individuals story, it takes time showing a range of reasons for wish becoming desire, and then obsession and then instability developing, and explores those issues enroute. But it ends up, I thought, suggesting heavily the psychological impact of her abortion being at the root of her final decline. She's not responding to pressure to conform, be anything, or be like anyone else - she's caught in her reaction to her own past? |
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Post by Steve on Sept 29, 2016 23:49:30 GMT
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. Fantastic review, Nicholas! I made it to the last show, and I was overwhelmed by it. I agree that if you use your brain, the characterisation comes off as thin and one-note, but for me, this is essentially a primal howl, so I preferred to throw my brain out the window. If you think about it, of course Yerma's offhand dismissal of adoption is ridiculous, and her goal of having a genetic child shouldn't isn't logically the be-all-and-end-all of life. If producing a mini-me is the only goal of me, then life is intrinsically pointless, after all. But biology isn't about rationality, and the play captures her irrationality, and descent into mental illness, as a slow inevitable march into biological hell over 9 years or so, that reaches such a fever pitch of intensity that I found this magnificent and unforgettable. It's all been said about how brilliant Billie Piper is in this, so I will focus on one specific thing I loved, which was how playful her performance was, from beginning to end. At first, she's effervescently playful, then she's quizzically playful, then sardonically playful, then bitterly playful, then bonkers playful, and only at the very very end does the playfulness end, and we get Yerma's pure unadulterated scream of agony. It's that moment the play drops out of Piper's performance that it kicked me so hard in the gut! A brilliant play, burying it's primal scream in an otherwise recognisable and topical milieu, with the best performance of the year from Piper, and excellent support from Brendan Cowell! 4 and a half stars.  |
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Post by peggs on Sept 30, 2016 12:12:56 GMT
Great review Steve, spot on.
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 1, 2016 22:00:36 GMT
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”. I know you're half-joking here, Nicholas, but - speaking as someone who has never wanted to have children - the reason most people want a baby is basically 'because she wants to'. At least from my perspective, anyway. People don't need any other reason. Indeed, they persist in wanting babies even when it's demonstrably the worst possible thing that could happen at that point in their lives, and they'd be much better off not having them. At some point you just have to chalk it up to biological imperative. HALF-joking? Is such a thing possible? You can never over-estimate how facetious I’m being. I only got into theatre so you lot have to take it seriously when we’re comparing Fannies and Gaylords.
But you’ve hit the nail on the head, actually. That’s a perfectly legitimate(ish) reason to have a child – for the sheer damn hell of it – but it didn’t work within this drama, when it so easily could have. A few years ago Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs was similarly about a very modern hip middle-class couple thinking about having a child “because they wanted to”, but they debated whether that was good enough in this world (they decided, spoiler, that (as Yerma decides) it was), and I refuse to believe that this couple would not have had the same conversations – even briefly – about whether that’s good enough and what it entails to bring a new life into the twenty-first century (particularly given how ‘modern’ other parts of the play were – they clearly read the Guardian, if they’ll discuss Sadiq and Avocados, they’ll sure as hell discuss the carbon footprint of eighteen years of child-rearing, let alone other practical concerns). More damningly, though, they just needed to say “I want a child, because I want a child” with some clarity, and whilst it wouldn’t be motivation enough for me personally, it would be motivation enough for the drama. If it’s a perfectly realistic reason for having a child, it needed to be spoken more clearly here.
But then, I wonder if Steve’s hit the nail on the head (lot of nails today). That’s too literal. Dare I flog my dead horse one more time and look at Lars von Trier, who literally destroys the world to make a metaphorical point about depression (in Melancholia, his least objectionable film, and his bona fide masterpiece), so, in comparison, denying a woman a baby is child’s play. I suppose it’s a similar thing here – ultimately the child’s a catalyst, a thematic point. And I don’t know where Lorca ends and Stone begins on that. But I do think that there needs to be a greater sense of realism to the macguffin to make the drama really, really zing.
And I do think a lack of depth and believability hurts it dramatically and emotionally, because without realism I can’t surrender to it wholly (and it was SO CLOSE to realism!). I can believe they’d dismiss adoption, because too many people sadly do. But to return to popcultureboy’s point, I can’t believe that some as strong as Yerma would let her husband take three years to do a sperm test out of misplaced machismo, or that her husband would be so callow himself, or that her friends wouldn’t have a word and make him do it – stalling, yes; macho pride, yes; three years, no not this couple. And I wish we saw more of the ‘rational’ woman before her ‘irrationality’ over the baby took control, because actually I think that would be more believable, to give her three dimensions and watch them crash to one desperate one, would make a far richer arc, and a far less repetitive first half.
That said, still much to admire, particularly in the second half where I think we can agree on it streamlining everything down to the basic, simple, desperate emptiness of her life. And besides, I think we could all do with a Steve Mini-Me in our lives.
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Post by alexandra on Oct 3, 2016 13:28:25 GMT
Nicholas, you just haven't got this at all - I should move on. I never have time to read your whole posts, but Yerma doesn't "decide" to have a child. She doesn't want one "for the sheer damned hell of it". She just wants one.
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