Yerma Performed

Subject:
Perhaps the images I had conjured in my mind after reading the play tainted my expectations of the performance, but to be quite honest, I did not enjoy seeing the production of Yerma on Thursday evening.

In asking myself why, the only two things that came to mind were the music and the flow of the performance. For starters, I am not saying that students cannot write beautiful music, it just seemed that this songwriter went beyond his scope (or at least the scope of his performers). The music did have a Spanish theme, true, but the sudden key changes in the middle of the songs were uncalled for and made it quite difficult for the singers to follow; this greatly disturbed the fluidity of the music and the message behind it as I found myself focusing more on the dissonant notes created between guitar and singer then on the lyrics.

It also felt as though the play were disjointed, that it didn’t move as I had pictured it in my head during our reading. I feel this was due to the fact that the actors would sometimes face away from the crowd or speak so softly that I couldn’t hear all of the words. As these words dropped out, it became difficult to follow and understand the story – there would be gaping holes that would leave me asking “what?” or “why?”

I feel that had I not read the play before hand, I would’ve been totally lost and confused during the performance; after all, I was befuddled with what I was seeing and I had just read the play a week prior.