Natalie Abrahami's reign as co-artistic director of the Gate is drawing to a close but this vigorous re-imagining of Lorca's great "tragic poem" of childlessness shows why she and Carrie Cracknell have been so feted. Many will take issue with the way Anthony Weigh has stripped Lorca's text down, jettisoning a number of characters en route, but for me this earthy, accessible rendering does the work great service, by getting straight to the heart of the woe of a childless peasant woman in a fecund land.
Weigh hasn't just cut away. He has also added homosexual undertones, implying that the reason why Juan (Hasan Dixon) shows such indifference to all things matrimonial is his "unnatural" affection for childhood friend Victor (Ross Anderson), nipped in the bud by marriage to Yerma (compelling Ty Glaser). Most crucially, though, Weigh does justice to Lorca's key themes: this isolated farming community's primal connection with nature and the intermingling of superstition and religion in a punitive shame culture.
Seated on three sides of a sand floor, we watch Yerma's fragile innocence - this is a world where matters of sex and the body remain resolutely undiscussed - corrode, as seasons pass and no child arrives. There's solace of sorts to be had from talking to her feisty neighbour Maria (a wonderfully humorous turn from Alison O'Donnell) but Yerma remains beseechingly desperate for affection from her flint-hearted husband, who would rather spend the night with his sheep than in the marital bed.
Until Dec 17 (020 7229 0706, gate theatre.co.uk)
Yerma
Gate Theatre
Pembridge Road (above the Prince Albert Pub), Notting Hill, W11 3HQ
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