NT Live: Yerma at Courtyard Playhouse

Theatre fans across Dubai will be able to watch some of the best of British theatre thanks to the National Theater Live initiative. National Theatre Live is the NT’s groundbreaking project to broadcast the best of British theater live from the London stage to cinemas around the world. Each performance is filmed in front of a live audience in the theater, with cameras positioned throughout the auditorium to ensure that cinema audiences get the ‘best seat in the house’ view of each production.

The Courtyard Playhouse will be live screening 'Yerma, in Dubai on 19th and 20th July. Starring the award-winning Billie Piper, this sell-out show has received phenomenal reviews from critics. Simon Stone's Olivier Award-winning contemporary adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca's 1934 classic ‘Yerma’ is about a farmer’s wife who becomes emotionally unhinged by her inability to conceive. Compounding the lead character's (Billie piper) distress are her relationships with her sister Mary (Charlotte Randle), who has no trouble conceiving but suffers from post-partum depression; her caustic feminist mother Helen (Maureen Beattie) who didn't particularly want children and doesn't see what the fuss is about; and former boyfriend Victor (John MacMillan), who deeply resented her decision to abort their child a decade earlier. As time goes on she becomes increasingly obsessed, her life and marriage unraveling in the process. As with Lorca's original play, this version ends in tragedy.

The characters and dialogues precisely ring true in this adaptation in which the original's societal and religious pressures have been internalized in psychological terms. Even as the central character descends deeper and deeper into despair, refusing even to entertain the possibility of adopting a child, we sympathize with her elemental struggle. Piper has garnered acclaim in recent years for her performances in such plays as The Effect and Reasons to Be Pretty. Her work in this play is simply staggering. Her character, at first delightfully and sexily full of life, devolves in such heartbreaking, visceral fashion that the evening takes on the feel of Greek tragedy. When the actress appears at the curtain call, looking emotionally and physical exhausted, you find yourself relieved that she's OK and concerned that she'll have to do it all over again the next night.


The Courtyard Playhouse broadcasts at least 10 productions per year exclusively for members of its NT Live Programme. The Annual Membership fee of AED 700 buys access to all NT Live events plus discounts on Playhouse Paraphernalia and workshops (members can also be able to bring a guest to four screenings per year). There’s also a restricted Temporary Membership option at AED 100, which gives you access to NT Live screenings for a month.