23rd Play - Knives in Hens by David Harrower
Jessica Hardwick and Michael Moreland in the Perth Theatre productino. Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
This one was suggested to me by a colleague. Additionally, it is by the same playwright who wrote Blackbird, that I read earlier and found fascinating.
Summary: “ In a pre-industrial, God-fearing community, we see a character known simply as Young Woman tethered like an animal to a village ploughman called Pony William. Although, like everyone else, she is taught to hate the local miller, the woman finds in him a source of emotional release that enables her to escape her husband and articulate her long-suppressed feelings. In that sense, the play echoes Shaw’s Pygmalion and Wesker’s Roots, in that it becomes a play about a woman’s liberation through words.” Michael Billington, The Guardian.
Laura’s thoughts in brief: While I have to honestly say that this is definitively not my kind of play, I did eventually find myself drawn in to it. It very much reminds me of Greek plays, which are truly not my favorite, but potent and full of fun things to play with. Frankly, this play depicts a world that I don’t want to spend time in - the playwright has stated that he had 15th century Scotland in mind. Dark, dirty, ignorance, misogyny. Blech. That all said, it is lovely to see the Young Woman develop as the story goes on, even if it’s a world I’m personally not excited about visiting. Her husband, Pony William, is in turns a typical misogynist male, and then a creature displaying moments of more; so he’s not completely two dimensional, as frequently men written for that era are. However, we see the conflict between them, and wonder how trapped is she? The miller isn’t a likely hero - he’s also complicated and dislikeable in moments as well, but he offers her writing and reading, and that is magical to her and to us. In reading about the play, it was called a “modern classic.” I can see how they see that - it was written in 1995, as Harrower was developing his voice as a playwright, but the pre-industrial setting gives us a fuzzy time period in which there are options. Ben Brantley of the New York Times called it an “allegory,” and I can see that as well. I think it would be fun to bring a really creative director to this project to see what would happen if we add a strong concept to the play, like Belgian director Lies Pauwels did in 2011, where “her setting … is both a modernist stage – most of the dialogue is delivered through microphones – and an end-of-the-pier funfair. The livestock is a vaulting horse, the mill wheel is a revolving red-and-white platform.” People who are purists may disagree with putting a concept on top of this piece, but I’m not excited to see the play in it’s dirty, 15th century form - that’s been done and pretty well, based on the reviews below. Now let’s play with this one!
READ MORE! Here’s what others had to say about productions:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2008/oct/14/theatre
https://www.culturewhisper.com/r/theatre/yael_farber_knives_in_hens_donmar_warehouse/9569
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/theater/knives-in-hens-review-david-harrower.html