The Company. Photo credit: Miles Davis
Simon Jenner, October 25th 2024
It starts as a tickle of memory, then it’s unmistakable. From this absorbing play set in Suffolk, March 1759 arises an a cappella version of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (originally set by Osnat Schmool, arranged here by Ella Jay Morley and Nettie Sheridan). Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin is co-directed for Identity Theatre at Wagner Hall by Nettie Sheridan and Gary Cook till October 26th.
There’s other pointers – some made the text but not the National Theatre production of 2020 or this – that render contemporary analogies in Kirkwood’s play beside the point. Once someone descends in white, like a visitation. Optic refraction – like Halley’s Comet – unsettles us into another world. It’s 1759 with a Doppler effect. Kirkwood’s ever-deft handling of science is scalloped round the edges.
It’s a play set – after three tableaux – over just a few hours, in one large 18th century room out of Hogarth or Longhi. Grey-green, sparse, teeming with fourteen people, table, chairs, a bucket. Replacing the original frieze there’s an inset moment in front of Wagner’s prosc-arch stage.
Then a tenebrous one by candelight where Sally Poppy, later the accused, returns to her husband to claim money he’s already spent. He dobs her in instead. Forget her being covered in someone’s blood: she’s confessed to a pregnancy he’s no share in. Her lover’s executed for the murder of Alice Wax, eleven, daughter of Lady Wax (Esme Ackroyd here confidently plays Alice and Katy Luke).
Sally’s only spared to ascertain if she’s truly pregnant. She might get transportation to America. Twelve empanelled matrons – who’ve known childbirth – are pressed into service. Luckily each comes forward to the Justice’s invisible voice to introduce themselves (Carl Loveday as Justice moves awkwardly offstage then delivers magnificently from the audience; monotonous repeat lines are happily trimmed here). Their findings will save or swing Sally.
Even here though, women’s agency is strictly limited. The threat of men and mob lap round.
Polly Jones and Joanna Ackroyd. Photo credit: Miles Davis
Joseph Bentley’s Will Coombes – the only man in that room – is crucially not allowed to speak, merely ask the verdict. Beforehand he’s more active. His last recruit is someone he’s sweet on, Joanna Ackroyd’s Elizabeth Luke, the midwife reluctant to leave noisy churning, then suddenly determined to speak up for loud, unrepentant Sally. To his plea that they’re both widowers, Elizabeth ripostes Coombes has a wife. “Yes but she is gone to Lowestoft.” She adds of Sally: “was I who brought Sally into the world. Janet merely contributed the screaming.” It’s clear from the outset Elizabeth will be the twelve’s leader.
Isobel Stoner’s Emma Jenkins, the prudish matriarch doesn’t hesitate dislike so much as spray it around like an aerosol, ready to jump on any salving testimony. Kirkwood though always springs something in her major characters. There’s Sam Nixon’s imperious Charlotte Cary, dismissive wife of the colonel. She’s another with a great reveal moment, as has Lex Lake’s hitherto-dumb Sarah Hollis, who finds her voice to damnable purpose. Debbie Creissen, the 83-year-old Sarah Smith conjures a pragmatic world with her 21 children.
There’s superbly-nuanced work too from Laura Scobie’s Kitty Givens: a downright young Scottish woman also, Scobie reveals in a gesture, reluctant to return home; heavily-pregnant and smugly-mated Peg Carter, Zarrina Danaeva’s deliciously complacent young wife (also Lady Wax); Judith Brewer, Kate Peltzer-Dunn’s perfectly prepared gossip about that Lowestoft wife. Ella Jay Morley’s Ann Lavender, a poet’s wife who removed her last ‘E’ at his exhortation to bring refinement, has moved “to raise our four daughters here in peasant honesty”.
As with other genteel characters, this production localises accents and doesn’t lift them to heighten binary class politics, which is perhaps a loss. It’s hard not to see an eco-snob skewered in Ann(e), brought out with pointedly anxious gentility (no honest peasant she) when confronted with gentry and fashionable streets.
Flossie Noar’s Mary Middleton is a tour-de-force of an inarticulate young woman, barely cognizant of what’s expected. Cathy Byrne’s Helen Ludlow is a tiny harrowing of a woman seething with the death of all her children. Hannah Rusted (Izzy Neal) bursts with Hannah’s naïve expressivity.
Sally Poppy as the accused is given a scorching frankness by Polly Jones, unrepentant as she relates what happened. Even more striking, Sally’s raw desire is expressed in 21st century demotic English, which differs to most others, though Kirkwood calibrates a degree of modernity to characters like Dr Willis. The point’s clear: a modern young woman is accused for being herself, though being Kirkwood it’s not as simple as that.
Garbed like an urchin (Sheridan’s costumes keenly contrasted) Sally’s othered herself as dangerous, sexually autonomous, witchy. We’ve heard a character describe an aunt once arraigned for witchcraft, yet the enlightenment’s come knocking. But even that doesn’t explain why Sally uses the word “aeroplane”. You double-take. It’s left hanging. Even smeared (Chris Horlock’s make-up tellingly sparse) you never feel Sally quite belongs.
Sally’s sexual epiphany’s rendered too with stark power and Kirkwood’s unflinching in this depiction of women’s agency in whatever circumstances. There’s a chilling isolation earlier when Sally wishes to relieve herself in a bucket and finds it difficult with a dress and manacles; a painful coping follows. Singularly, not even Elizabeth helps.
Ensemble. Photo credit: Miles Davis
All are superb performances. We’re brought back to Ackroyd as the gravitational pull of this production. Her Elizabeth is clear, tough-tender and like Mother Courage not able to show feeling at crucial junctures. Even Ackroyd’s silence tells as you’re drawn to her imminent speech.
At a crucial moment one Doctor Willis (Carl Lovejoy, also Fred Poppy as well as Justice) is brought in to nullify the deadlocked deliberations. More local-sounding than the original Willis, Lovejoy’s cheery mix of enlightened bedside manner then refusal to shake Elizabeth’s hand is a scalpel-sharp portrayal of would-be modern men. He waxes on “a tyranny of the ovaries” though in excusing Sally’s actions on medical grounds he makes a blunt stab at enlightenment. Everywhere though, men remain the problem.
There’s striking moments throughout, like the end of Act One with a dodgy fireplace. Ensemble ones too variegate a texture trying to give air to the huge cast. With Lex Lake’s coaching dialect and 18th century terms work well though (as with the National) accents can occlude. Only the text clarifies these. There’s a little simultaneous conversation between women. This occasionally obscures for instance Emma’s confiding to Kitty: “I’ve always carried a knife since my uncle came home from the Navy when I was a girl.” “He give it to you, did he?” “No.”
Less linear than Twelve Angry Men, this production of The Welkin’s zig-zag reveals and explosive climax makes two hours forty sing. It clips 15 minutes off the original though might pick up a notch in the first act; and drop a little authentic Suffolk for clarity.
Fin George’s lighting is elaborate and at Act Two’s start wondrous. The Wagner’s kit presents challenges; at the empanelling faces are occluded as they step forward and lighting swings round curiously.
Identity excels with large ensembles. The sheer acting catches fire: not a weak link, with only occasional muffled projection – and that’s largely Kirkwood’s insistence on accents. And it’s mainly Kirkwood’s fault (for once) that Act One jerks slowly into life here. With their most ambitious production though ID triumph. There’s nothing like them at full stretch.
After Chimerica, The Children and to a great extent Mosquitoes some might grumpily assert that Kirkwood’s business is writing masterpieces. And picking apart anything she writes. It’s beside the point. Kirkwood’s work will endure and we’ll keep on finding new things in it. The Welkin is a hugely ambitious play in slow motion; it breaks out of historical context to blaze round like a warning. As it settles, there shouldn’t be any surprise if some of us see it revived nationally; not least in 2061, when Halley’s Comet returns.
Polly Jones and Joanna Ackroyd. Photo credit: Miles Davis
Production details:
Co-directed and co-produced by Nettie Sheridan (also Costume Designer, Stage Manager and Chaperone) and Gary Cook, with Set and Sound Design by Gary Cook; Lighting Design and Technical by Fin George.
Make-Up Chris Horlock, Vocal Arrangement Ella Jay Morley and Nettie Sheridan with Kate Bush melodies originally set by Osnat Schmool, Accent Coach Lex Lake, Wardrobe Identity Theatre with thanks to Brighton Little Theatre, Gladrags Costume Hire
Properties Identity Theatre, Photography Miles Davis, Original poster model Freya Sheridan
Front of House Volunteers Chip Peltzer and Olivia Jeffery
Extra Special Thanks Myles Locke (Brighton Little Theatre), Gin Palace Productions, Martin Oakley, Margaret Skeet, BHOS, Liz Cook, Paul Sheridan, Penny at Wagner Hall.