Her
Or maybe not. This is the puzzle of Her, and its most promising aspect. Yaged weaves the experiences of Serena at ages 8, 15, 22, and 29 into the relationship she has with Ariel at 22 and 29. Without playing into cloying inner-child stereotypes, Yaged shows the natural curiosity and sometimes despairing eccentricity that drive Serena even as a child. As a young woman, Serena’s promiscuity and erotic manipulations are challenged by Ariel’s monogamy and needy moodiness. In the end, confronted by Ariel’s 29-year-old maturity, Serena is forced to accept that their relationship has to become something new–probably the only way this mismatched pair has a chance.
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In the first act, the two youngest Serenas move in and out of the house where the 22-year-old Ariel and Serena live together, the 8-year-old writing in diaries and playing jacks and other children’s games, the 15-year-old waxing sullen, discovering pornography, and demonstrating any number of times Serena’s developing independence and sexuality. Meanwhile the 22-year-old pair are plainly terrified by their love: Ariel is homophobic, and behind her perkiness Serena is filled with self-loathing. Their reunion in the second act–when Serena meets Ariel, now married, in her living room–parallels the embattled end of their relationship seven years earlier.
Director Becky Brett effectively blocks the action, and her actors hit their marks, but she hasn’t found a way to convey and yet contain the play’s tension. By the time the reunion arrived I’d witnessed too many all-out confrontations, explosions, and reconciliations to worry much about these desperate women. Yaged’s two lovers are convincing, however, thanks primarily to the easy eroticism of Sarah Romine, who plays Serena at 22. Bethany Anderson, who plays Ariel at 29, successfully combines the character’s repressed passion and moral control. And as young Serena, Andrea Noel Costa is casual and quite natural. But the other performers are trapped in the emotional excesses of Yaged’s characters, shrilling, pacing, and stiffening as they indicate the feelings and betrayals instead of embodying them.
