Description
Book SynopsisOne life in the hands of 12 women. Rural Suffolk, 1759. As the country waits for Halley's comet, Sally Poppy is sentenced to hang for a heinous murder. When she claims to be pregnant, a jury of 12 matrons are taken from their housework to decide whether she's telling the truth, or simply trying to escape the noose. With only midwife Lizzy Luke prepared to defend the girl, and a mob baying for blood outside, the matrons wrestle with their new authority, and the devil in their midst. The Welkin premiered at the National Theatre, London, in 2020, directed by James Macdonald and featuring Maxine Peake and Ria Zmitrowicz. Lucy Kirkwood's other plays include Mosquitoes, The Children, Chimerica (winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play, the Evening Standard Best Play Award, the Critics' Circle Best New Play Award, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), NSFW and it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now.
Trade Review'A superb new history play - a feminist courtroom drama that's equal parts Twelve Angry Men, The Crucible and The Vagina Monologues, plus a dash of searing, up-to-the-minute political and social commentary... a warm, humane and very funny piece, firmly anchored in women's everyday experience' Broadway World; 'Brilliant, brave, bold and intelligent theatre. It is, for all the seriousness of its subject, often very funny yet at the close, profoundly moving' WhatsOnStage; 'A mighty play: magnificent in its scope, depth and intricacy... a wise, funny, richly intelligent and generously ambitious play that asks, as all good history plays do, how far have we really come?' Financial Times; 'Dazzles with its examination of the big, immovable structures that inflict violence on women... there is so much richness in its visual imagination' Guardian 'Ungoverned, furious, larky, layered... sheer, gutsy audacity' Evening Standard
