Foreground: Ruth Lawrence. Background: Kate Corbett, Monica Walsh. Photography by Justin Hall.
Rocking the Cradle
Toronto Premiere
An RCA Theatre Company Production
By Des Walsh, freely adapted from Lorca’s Yerma
Directed by Richard Rose
Starring Kate Corbett, Jane Dingle, Darryl Avalon Hopkins, Didi Gillard-Rowlings, Greg King, Ruth Lawrence, and Monica Walsh
Runs November 11 – December 13 @ Tarragon Theatre Mainspace
By Daina Valiulis
“There is no disease in the world like desire,” says Mary, a resident of a small Newfoundland outport. It is this sentiment, fuelled by the burning need to have a child, that tortures a fisherman’s wife, Joan, to madness in Newfoundland native Des Walsh’s Rocking the Cradle. Everything in the production serves to echo this burning and ultimately fruitless desire, from the costumes to the soundscape, the poetic musicality of the script, and especially the set — the home and prison in which Joan is trapped, making for a deeply tortured and effective piece.
Adapted from Federico Garcia Lorca’s Yerma (set in a remote village in Spain during Lorca’s time about a barren woman surrounded by childbearing neighbours), Rocking the Cradle spins the tale of Joan (Ruth Lawrence), a young, dreamy, and optimistic young woman in 1960s Newfoundland who marries Vince (Darryl Avalon Hopkins), a man fundamentally content to have the companionship of a wife at home for the rest of his life, and nothing more. Joan has always dreamed of having a family, however, and as time goes on and she realizes that her dream is growing further out of reach, she transforms into a bitter, angry woman, tortured by feelings of loneliness and isolation.
The acting is quite good all around, and the songs intertwined with the script reveal both the culture of the East Coast and express Joan’s desperation and sadness. Lorca’s work is melancholy and poetic, and becomes something unique with Walsh’s incorporation of traditional Irish and Newfoundland folk songs. The soundscape of the whistling wind is effective, echoing the cries of Joan’s unborn child, and hearkens to the sparse and barren landscape of the Newfoundland coastline of the 1960s.
The set is like a cross-section of a room in a dollhouse, with a door and a simple table with chairs in the middle of the room. The most interesting part of the set, especially with regards to storytelling, is a screen covering the entire proscenium, which gives onstage action the grainy look of old film and creates a barrier between audience and actors, furthering the theme of isolation. At times, a window is projected — Joan looks longingly out of it, singing to herself. Other times it serves as a forest, or the ocean, but always nailing Joan into her coffin to beautiful effect.
Rocking the Cradle marries Lorca’s original tale with a uniquely Canadian story, bringing the flavour and culture of the East Coast to the big city. A heart-jerking and compellingly haunting production.
