Sarah Gadon brings intensity as a woman destructively obsessed with motherhood in ‘Yerma’

Yerma

Written by Simon Stone after Federico García Lorca and directed by Diana Bentley. Until March 5 at the Coal Mine Theatre, 2076 Danforth Ave. coalminetheatre.com

Coal Mine Theatre confidently launches the next phase of its life with the story of a couple’s wrenching struggle to open a new chapter in theirs.

Australian playwright Simon Stone’s play boldly updates Federico García Lorca’s classic about a childless woman driven to extremes by her obsession with motherhood. Stone directed the play’s acclaimed 2016 world premiere at London’s Young Vic Theatre, featuring Billie Piper in what many described as an astonishingly no-holds-barred performance (I did not see that production).

Coal Mine’s co-artistic director, Diana Bentley, making a remarkable directing debut, has scaled her production and its performances to fit the intimate size of Coal Mine’s lovely new theatre while not shying away from the challenging nature of this material. This production inaugurates Coal Mine’s new premises at Danforth and Woodbine after a fire destroyed their previous Danforth location last year.

The production is also the stage acting debut of Canadian film and TV star Sarah Gadon as the central character (called only “Her” in the script) and she brings those screen acting skills to bear in her slow-burning, psychologically intense performance. She is beautifully matched by Daren A. Herbert as her husband, John, and much of the success of the production lies in how convincingly they portray a relationship imploding through a combination of external and internal forces.

Bentley stages the play in the round with the action happening in a sunken pit painted stark white, so that the audience is gazing down on the characters as if they were a science experiment. Kaitlin Hickey’s lights are in perfect tandem with her set, brashly illuminating the early scenes in which Her and John celebrate their prosperity with recognizable smugness. They’re toasting their recent house purchase with Veuve Clicquot because, in John’s words, “We’re not Dom yet, babes.”

With Stone’s permission, Coal Mine has Toronto-fied a script originally set in London, so that we get specific references to John Tory, bike lanes and Shoppers Drug Mart; as well as general references to sky-high real estate prices that resonate both here and there.

Her’s mental health declines as she becomes increasingly fixated on having a child and Hickey’s light grows more filtered, suggesting metaphorical shutters coming down on the character’s potential for happiness.

This subject matter has always been challenging, and this version and production commit to keeping it that way. In the 1930s Lorca was critiquing the oppressiveness of Catholic Spanish society and the pressures it put on women to reproduce.

This version continues to centre the capacity to conceive as a central identity issue for women and painfully exposes the destruction on all levels (psychological, interpersonal, financial) that infertility can wreak. This is discomfiting, purposely so: Bentley writes in a program note that “there is still a silent negotiation in our culture of what, as women, we can share and not share.”

A related bold move on Stone’s part is to critique the ways in which contemporary culture rewards self-exposure by making Her a lifestyle journalist and blogger who brings life and work together in ways that become destructive of herself and others. Out of that silent negotiation that Bentley identifies, Her proceeds to catastrophically overshare.

To what extent is Her responsible for her actions? What agency do she, John and the other characters have to resist societal pressure to present their lives as shiny-perfect? Such is the deeply lived quality of this production that it seems clear that Bentley and her team have engaged with such questions deeply, and I can’t wait to talk about these issues with others who’ve seen the show.

The precision of the set and lighting are echoed in performances and other design and production choices. Louise Lambert is warmly likeable as Her’s less-outwardly-composed sister and Martha Burns coolly perfect as their professor mother, who doesn’t hesitate to tell Her that pregnancy was hateful to her, like “being colonized by someone’s sperm.”

Johnathan Sousa brings great empathy to his characterization of Her’s ex-boyfriend and Michelle Mohammed is bracingly convincing as Her’s younger colleague, written as a near-parody of a self-absorbed Gen Zer who eggs Her on toward self-exposure (“This s— is viral baby”). A final, uncredited cast member captivates in a brief appearance that heartbreakingly literalizes the play’s key theme.

Joshua Quinlan’s impeccably stylish costumes expertly add to the impression that these people have committed deeply to leading showroom-quality lives, at least on the surface.

The play is written as a series of short, abruptly ending scenes and, on opening night, those cues were almost always timed perfectly: kudos to stage manager Katie Fitz-Gerald and the entire team for executing what felt like magical transitions. Keith Thomas’s sound design and composition do excellent work in helping shift the atmosphere in those moments.

Given the production’s overall precision, a lengthy scene late in the play set at a music festival felt out of place in its physical and aural messiness: the writing presents challenges in terms of conveying information and overlapping locations that the production has not fully met.

This is difficult material and those with sensitivities to the subject matter and to depictions of violence are advised to take the content warning on the Coal Mine website seriously.

Doubtless due to Gadon’s star power, as well as Coal Mine’s strong following, the show’s limited run has already been extended a week, through March 5. It offers welcome evidence that Coal Mine’s commitment to bold texts in bold productions will continue in its new home.