Lucy Kirkwoodová

The Welkin’

Mahen Theatre / Drama Dates and tickets

Ranking among the best contemporary plays, The Welkin’ offers a stirring plot with surprising revelations. The staging is remarkable for its opulent scenography and costumes, as well as for the impressive exploits of the thirteen actresses who are present on the stage for almost the entire performance. A provocative spectacle that will be particularly enjoyed by fans of thrillers and dark humour.

Rural England in the middle of the eighteenth century: the gallows are being erected in a little town to hang a female murderer of a small girl. Yet the murderer claims to be pregnant which would thwart her hanging. That is why the tribunal summons twelve women, all mothers, to determine whether the now-convicted Sally is expecting a child. All the thirteen women and a warden are confined in a cell of the municipal fortress.  We are witnessing that the task is much harder than it seemed, and that many of the jurors are not as impartial as they look. Along with the midwife Elisabeth, who delivered all the children of the jury, we wonder about the harshness of these ‘matrons’. Beaten by life and often by their husbands too, they end up resorting to brutality, either out of grudge or jealousy, or out of revenge for a bygone injustice. The brand new drama from the British playwright Lucy Kirkwood (born in 1983), was presented by the London National Theatre in January 2020.  The Brno Mahen Theatre will stage The Welkin’ (Heavens) under the direction of Michal Lang, director of the Prague Divadlo pod Palmovkou, which was named ‘Theatre of the Year’ in 2019.

Czech premiere: 26th February 2021 at the Mahen Theatre

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Production team

Pavel Dominik Translation
Michal Lang Direction
Barbara Gregorová Dramaturgy
Mirek Kaczmarek Stage and costume design
Petr Svozílek Singing production

Cast

When do we play?

Photogallery