Off to NT Live - Yerma

Rebecca and I share the same compulsion. That would be, going to National Theater Live Events in our respective Cineplex Theatres. She is an hour behind me, going in Victoria. By the time I have come home and written up something on the blog, she is just arriving home, ready to make a response.

I missed the original event this Thursday and when she called to see if I had gone, she said it was a good thing I missed it. The only event that has been worse is the Medea play a couple of years ago.

With that warning from her, I could hardly have wanted to go see the show.

But I saw an encore was being shown this Saturday and like a lemming to water, I ran out the door of my house on my way to the theatre, with barely enough time to get there. No earrings or necklaces. No rings on my fingers. No lipstick. Old jeans and a t-shirt. Not even the hard fruit candies that I slip into my purse to keep me awake. I was just praying that I wouldn’t meet anyone I knew either coming or going.

Billie Piper in Yerma

The show was as Rebecca warned: gut wrenching.

I don’t know how Duncan continues to go with her time after time, because when a show is billed as a tragedy, things just don’t go well at the end of the film.

They just can’t. It is a tragedy. And in this show they went very poorly.

At one point in the film the couple in question had a baby in their arms and Duncan thought to himself, “If that baby dies, I am just going to walk out of the theatre.” But the plot didn’t go in that direction, thankfully, for it is a long walk home from the theatre in Victoria to his suburb.

The show was worth every painful moment. I loved the scene changes. The theatre blackened and all the viewer saw was white letters on the screen, either telling us which act we were in, or how many months or years had now passed. Kind of like the early silent movie films.

The actors were in a huge glass box with minimal props: a tree, some grass, some moving boxes – stark.

As the day has passed, now one day since I saw the show, I have been thinking about how much over-talking was going on between the actors. I had to either watch her (Billie Piper was called Her in the credits – she was never named) or her husband, (actor Brendan Cowell). I liked the power of that dialogue – in your face, but making it possible for me to listen to either one or the other.

I don’t know when the next NT Live showing will be, but I hope we have done the tragedy for the year and can go onto something much, much more fun.

Arta

P.S.  Nex National Theate Live?  Cyrano de Bergerac.  Can hardly wait!