Review: Passion, privilege and power in memorable The Welkin on Coventry stage

Passion runs through The Criterion Theatre’s production of Lucy Kirkwood’s 2020 play The Welkin. There’s the passion of the performances, especially the two lead actresses, Anne-Marie Green as Elizabeth Luke, local midwife and advocate of women’s power and knowledge, and Alice Scott as Sally Poppy, stroppy, foul-mouthed and seemingly unrepentant victim of a system and a culture that is built upon privilege, both gendered and class-based.

The play is largely set in 1759. Halley’s comet is about to pass over the land, presaging change. Sally stands condemned of murdering the child of wealthy landowner Lady Wax, whose family rule over the rural community in Suffolk. Her abusive husband has already been hanged for it, and the crowd are now baying for her blood. But Sally claims she is pregnant. Under the rules of the time, she cannot be hanged as that would destroy the life of her innocent child, though she can be transported to America, a sentence which carries its own risk of death. Her fate lies in the hands of twelve women, assembled from the local populace, who must decide whether or not she is telling the truth.

The play knowingly echoes Twelve Angry Men, a 1950s courtroom drama that became a successful stage and film production, and which centred upon one member of the reluctant jury insisting on justice rather than expediency and convenience for the condemned. Here it is less justice per se that motivates Elizabeth Luke as the rights of women - and herself in particular - to preside over the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, the last refuge for women against male power. She is prepared to go all out in defence of Sally, who annoyingly doesn’t seem to want to be saved by Elizabeth for reasons that come to be revealed. The members of the jury, each played as strong women characters in their own right, have their own issues to deal with, some honest, some not, all of which come out in this long but gripping drama. If men are made uncomfortable by the physical reality of women’s health, pregnancy and childbirth then an advisory warning might be in order, for this play does not shy away from the brutal facts of conception, birth and death.

All this might sound unremittingly dark. But the performance is shot through with a dry humour that lifts it way above mere polemic. For my money, The Welkin is one of the finest productions I have seen on the Criterion’s stage, which is saying something. Though the play is perhaps a little over long, especially in the early stages, and somewhat heavy on message, it grips throughout. There is polemic for sure, but it is matched by psychological depth, intelligence and a matchless cast who deliver a powerful story.

The Welkin, once seen, will not easily be forgotten.

The Welkin runs at the Criterion Theatre until October 28. Visit criteriontheatre.co.uk to book.