KNIVES IN HENS. To 21 February.
Manchester
KNIVES IN HENS
by David Harrower
Royal Exchange Studio To 21 February 2004
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wed 2.30pm, Sat 4pm
Runs 1hr 20min No interval
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
boxoffice@royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 February
Enough to persuade you walking most of Glasgow's streets at night's safer and more enjoyable than the country life.Alongside the heritage-trail, property-owning fantasy of bucolic peace, there have always been sorrowful songs of rural misery. David Harrower's first play, revived with implacable concentration in Jo Combes' first solo Exchange production, belongs aggressively to the second pattern.
Life for ploughman William, necessary to this Scottish village's existence but dubbed Pony' by locals owing to an alleged over-fondness for the beasts, his sullen, guarded young wife, all learned propriety with natural lewdness occasionally breaking out, and miller Gilbert, is a hard grind in every way.
It's Gilbert who gradually wears down this anonymous woman's fear-raised barriers, bringing enlightenment through the written word. He meets her lugging sacks for milling, and talks of the value of his diary, how it builds a memory and gives shape and sense to his life.
Rae Hendrie's wife moves from an opening dull assertion, unable to understand metaphor or simile, approaching the world with head hung over a defiantly upright body, hands ready to tighten into fists, words spattering out to form a defensive palisade. The men in her life represent her journey, from Stuart Bowman's sullen, hostile husband, to Derek Riddell's neat miller, his beginnings of wisdom matched by understanding humour.
It's no journey into pure light, despite the warm colouring after the dark, violent climax. Built round the suitably arid, minimal floor and table of Becky Hurst's in-the-round set, Jo Combes' production keeps a tight rein on feelings, actions and expression every detail counts in this tense, close-up world.
It's one where the individual lives are slotted into a similarly tight-reined society. As the young woman moves effortfully through the ellipses of Harrower's action towards a world of verbally-expressed realisation, the offstage village, for all its rumour-mongering, is described as silent'.
In the light of his 2003 play Dark Earth, it's possible to see too schematic an approach to these characters the kind of thing that impresses some audiences and gains most critics' admiration. Maybe direction or acting could have made some moments more quirkily rich. Yet such an approach might merely have seemed incongruous in this consistently dark and yes, impressive play and production
Young Woman: Rae Hendrie
Pony William: Stuart Bowman
Gilbert Horn: Derek Riddell
Director: Jo Combes
Designer: Becky Hurst
Lighting: Gareth Starkey
Sound: Steve Brown
2004-02-08 13:21:14