Rural England, 1759. As the country awaits the return of Halley’s comet, a young woman is sentenced to death. When she tries to escape the noose by claiming she is pregnant, twelve ordinary women are gathered to decide whether she is telling the truth. A dark, fierce, funny play about democracy and housework.
Lizzie and Sally may be the core duo, but Kirkwood offers her secondary characters the best material. Susannah Perkins is wonderful as Mary, one of several comic-relief characters, notable for her dim-witted sweetness (she “does not know which glove belongs on which hand,” Lizzie says); Ann Harada shines as a lusty, menopausal mischief-maker, who takes great joy in humiliating the humorless bailiff. Sarah (Hannah Cabell) is a mute jury member who forces herself to speak after years of silence; her hoarse confession that she has seen a cloven-hoofed woman, spitting on blackberries to make them sour, is the dense, dark heart of “The Welkin.” Sarah has, until her outburst, seemed affable and sane, and when she tells the others not only that she met a devil-woman but that the demon delivered Sarah’s baby, the women all accept her testimony as though it makes perfect sense. It’s like the moment in a village-gone-bad thriller, say, “Midsommar” or “The Wicker Man,” when you realize that everybody’s in on it. A sweet face is no guarantee that the mind behind it isn’t wriggling like a bag of snakes.
Sandra Oh makes for a very effective Henry Fonda, as he appeared in “Twelve Angry Men.” She also manages to convey Nancy Kelly at her most distraught and maternal in “The Bad Seed.” And swirling around this actor are another 15 equally gifted performers who bring to mind “The Crucible” in its most powerful moments and “Dead Ringers” at its most lurid. Lucy Kirkwood’s sometimes bewildering and always fascinating new play “The Welkin” opened Wednesday at the Atlantic Theater Company after its world premiere at London’s National Theatre in 2020.
2024 | Off-Broadway |
Atlantic Theater Company Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
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