A serious work sincerely intent on illustrating the subjugation of provincial English women during the mid-18th century, The Welkin is an audacious mash-up of dramatic genres.
Its British playwright, Lucy Kirkwood, is best known here for The Children, a relatively hushed three-hander involving retired nuclear engineers that was staged on Broadway in 2017.
In contrast, The Welkin is a more elaborate work employing 16 actors who sometimes scream.
An ambitious, sporadically compelling drama, The Welkin strives to consider long-ago women’s attitudes about their lives from a modern day perspective. The symbolic link between then and now is Halley’s Comet, the appearance of which in the heavens fascinates several among the play’s characters in 1759.
Set in rural England, Kirkwood’s story centers on Sally, a woman convicted of the gruesome murder of a child and condemned to hang that same day. Her male lover/accomplice already executed, Sally now “pleads the belly.” If she is found pregnant, Sally will live to be deported to America.
According to custom, a “jury of matrons” is hastily assembled from the town to determine Sally’s condition. Outside, a mob howls for her death.
Early in the play’s two hours and thirty minutes of unhappy doings, a striking sequence extracts these wives and mothers from their dreary household labors to introduce them as individuals. (Further linking this story’s two different eras beyond Halley’s Comet, the script directs that the casting of actors should reflect England’s ethnic population today.)
Even as most of the women, a few openly hostile, reject her pregnancy claim, Sally is fiercely defended by Elizabeth, the feisty midwife who delivered her and knows many of these women intimately.
Too bad Sally proves to be a diabolical creature proud of her misdeeds. As the dozen jurors argue Sally’s fate, terrible secrets will spill forth about hardscrabble miseries of drudgery, miscarriages and abusive menfolk.
“Nobody blames God when there is a woman can be blamed instead,” observes Elizabeth.
Produced by London’s National Theatre in early 2020, The Welkin touches upon issues of gender, class, power and misogyny. A dark comedy that grows tragic, its shape-shifting second act goes magical when the ladies erupt into a wild acapella rendition, plus choreography, of the mid-1980s Bangles hit “Manic Monday” about a woman’s desire to take life easy. (The last time Halley’s Comet zipped through was 1986.)
Smoothed out by Kirkwood’s ability to compose seemingly period dialogue, The Welkin is an uneven quilt of quasi-historic works, whodunits, mother love melodrama and jury plays. It recalls works such as Twelve Angry Men, Vinegar Tom, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Top Girls – the last trio by the great Caryl Churchill, obviously an influence on the surreal qualities of this piece – and The Crucible, just for starters. Witchcraft, angels, devils and handy tips on how to quell an amorous husband with a brick wrapped inside a cloth are among incidental topics.
In addition to the ironic Bangles breakout, the playwright conjures other memorably theatrical moments as in a grimly comical scene when the women all bow their heads in prayer and ignore Sally — her hands bound at the wrists — while she desperately tries to lift her skirts to pee into a bucket. Not incidentally, urine, blood and breast milk are elements mixing into the action as well as a fire that ends the first act amid billows of acrid smoke.
Let’s expect that the Atlantic Theater Company production of The Welkin, which opened Wednesday at its Linda Gross Theater, has realized the drama’s potential better than it looked at a critics’ preview last week. That performance was uneasy with staging and lighting miscues, audibility lapses and mostly from a 16-member company that had yet to mesh effectively as an ensemble.
Director Sarah Benson’s twilight vision for the drama is achieved partly through the authentic looks of the 1750s clothes designed by Kaye Voyce, the hair and wig design by Cookie Jordan and the bleak blue-and-brown surroundings created by the dots collective. Stacey Derosier’s intentionally murky lighting design brightens unnaturally for visions and confessions.
Several artists rose above last week’s bumpy performance. Sandra Oh is urgent in spirit, dry in manner as Elizabeth, the midwife whose acrid presence sparks conflict. Haley Wong creates a feral Sally who resolutely defies pity. Mary McCann coolly depicts a gentlewoman revealed to be not so genteel. Nadine Malouf smolders as the mean girl among a crowd that includes Ann Harada as a sufferer of hot flashes, Hannah Cabell as a soul twenty years mute who miraculously speaks, and ever-earthy Dale Soules as an octogenarian of staunch disposition.
“Think of the women who will be in this room when that comet comes round again,” remarks the wise Elizabeth during a critical moment in the play. Although The Welkin serves distinctly familiar goods, at least it may cause viewers today to think about how far attitudes involving women have changed since 1986 when the astronomical phenomenon last passed the Earth.
The Welkin opened June 12, 2024 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through June 30. Tickets and information: atlantictheater.org
