Overambition

THE 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.

One of the best things director Bill Rauch has going for him is the choice of the play. The beauty of the language and imagery of Lorca's tragic poem about a childless woman in a rural village contributes substantially to the impact of the play. And the play does have impact; it is doubtful that anyone could walk out of it without some strong opinion.

The play opens to the strains of Robb Jordan's original score, parts of which demonstrate considerable talent. The theme which begins and closes the play is haunting and melodic. The music is impressive, and only rarely does Jordan fall into the pitfalls of a beginning composer, repetition and monotony.

The 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.

But while the staging immediately draws the audience in, some of the effects are not followed through. The brief film provides an interesting beginning but is soon forgotten in the context of the rest of the play. And where the constant presence of the entire cast emphasizes the drama taking place in the stage's physical center, it also puts an extraordinary amount of emphasis on the actor's performance--emphasis which some actors can handle, but not others.

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.

But 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."

But in most cases it is the direction, not the cast that proves unsettling. At one point about three quarters of the way through the play, the audience is shaken out of an absorbing drama and thrown into a high-tech world of blinding light and blasting, raucous music. An attempt by Rick Reynolds to sing is lost in the overwhelming visual effect and affront of the staging.

This is followed by a mystical and erotic scene that reaches to explain the mysteries of fecundity that evade and torment Yerma. Reach it does, but not quite far enough; while the symbolism and open sexuality of the Male and Female Mask is striking and effective, the closing of the semi-circle of cast members into a circle, which now excludes the audience, isolates and distances spectators who before had been drawn into the circle of Yerma's pain.

Rauch's interpretation succeeds in generalizing Yerma's dilemma into a cross-cultural experience. Rauch tones down the Spanish influences until there are only subtle suggestions of it in the delicate frill of a classical guitar and the fringed shawl that Yerma drapes over her head. And in this he excels; the villagers could belong to any village. Juan's possessive sisters to any brother and Yerma's pain to any women.

But Rauch's adaptation addresses the many levels and aspects of the play too briefly. The play's many brilliant moments are somehow not convincingly juxtaposed. Likewise, the production encompasses many bright ideas within Rauch's production. But like a precocious child, Rauch doesn't seem to have the patience to follow them through to a conclusion. Mary C. Warner