Yuri Yamada Et pourtant j’aimerais bien te comprendre...

Yuri Yamada, the director, actress, script writer and militant feminist brings us a humorous, intelligent opus on an issue that creates a true gender divide, that of pregnancy. On the border between classical register and a theatre of anticipation, the Tokyo artist gives free reign to outlandish scenes and hypotheses. 

In their western-style living room, a young couple talks things over, from time to time. The jokey, distant timbre sets the tone for the incessant bantering, and which glosses over the unsaid. In brief, the young woman cannot bring herself to tell her partner that she is pregnant. Shifting between ultra-realistic dialogues and near-fantastical lyricism, the piece brings to the stage the many questions that the protagonist is plagued by. It does so in a progressive way, in the form of a mosaic diffracted between the different female characters. Quirky, occasionally vaudeville, and bitter in of tragi-comic way, the acting clashes with the gentle décor. In addition, the stage design sets up collisions between the visible and the invisible, realism and symbolism – before the piece finally spirals out of control.  Yuri Yamada’s production is a lesson in the art of paradox, and she achieves her aim - of mapping out a kaleidoscope of the reality of couples in today’s Japan, in a society which is more patriarchal than it would seem - in a masterful way.