Spanish Playwright Federico Garcia Lorca's "Yerma" at the Armory

"Yerma" by Spanish playwright & poet Federico Garcia Lorca (b Spain 1898-1936) is the 2nd of his 'Rural Trilogy'. The last play in the trilogy was published posthumously after Lorca's assassination in 1936.  In Lorca's short & tormented life he wrote dark & dramatic poems & plays.  "Yerma" in a revised rendition made relevant in today's high tech world and simultaneously it's an ancient tale of eternal immersion into misery and insanity.  "Yerma" harkens back to macabre Greek tragedies such as Euripides' Medea or Socrates' Antigone.  The theatrical glass box set has audiences looking in from two sides encasing the actors in a glass cage.  The very modern setting is minimal, a video monitor flashes the chapters, scenes and time references while the audience is bathed in complete darkness make the audience feel imprisoned as well.  Extremely loud operettas fill-in during the blackouts between scenes.  There's an overriding feeling of being trapped as a voyeur much as the actors are entrapped within their glass house.  The visceral sense of confinement & impending doom is overwhelming.   The play begins happily with a couple, Helen and John celebrating the purchase of their first home.  Helen tells John she would like to have a child.  John is reluctant being in his early 40s but soon happily acquiesces.  Happiness is soon fleeting as Yerma's growing obsession to give birth only bears misery & destruction.  There's little joy in this very dark drama.  Helen's neurotic sister Mary has a child but is in a depressing & loveless marriage.  Their cheerless mother is of little comfort.  Yerma yearns unrelentingly for motherhood descending her into madness and tragedy.  Lorca's powerful universal theme of a woman's ultimate & unaccessible desire as being so omnipotent it destroys whatever else remains in life.  This is a painful & draining experience, one that most theater goers would not choose to endure.  For thespians who yearn for a moving theatrical experience this will leave an impregnable punch to your gut.