Traverse, Edinburgh, 7 June 2011, and touring

IF YOU remember David Harrower’s debut play as a quiet and meditative study of elemental passions set in the pre-industrial countryside, you are in for a shock when you see this National Theatre of Scotland revival. It is still about elemental passions but, under the direction of Lies Pauwels, it is no longer quiet, meditative or even pre-industrial.

With an approach that, on one hand, is finely tuned to the play’s deeper impulses and, on the other, is unconcerned about its surface realism, the Belgian director turns Knives in Hens inside out. The result may infuriate or thrill, but either way, it will not leave you cold.

Duncan Anderson as Pony William (photo Peter Dibden)

It was an inspired move for the NTS to give the job to Pauwels who, through her work with the Belgian company Victoria, is a pioneering name in European theatre. After Knives in Hens had its debut at Edinburgh’s Traverse in 1995, it was embraced all over Europe, translated into many languages and hailed as a modern classic. Being set in no particular place and being concerned with characters who speak a simple, colourless language, the play travelled well. When it was staged in Hungary, the critics declared: “This play is about us and Hungarian theatre will never be the same again.”

Despite productions abroad numbering in their hundreds, the play has had only one professional revival in Scotland before now. So there is a logic in inviting a director with a European sensibility to show the home audience this modern classic afresh.

And fresh it certainly is. What you expect to see played out is the story of a nameless young woman who works the fields with her ploughman husband, Pony William, so called because of his affinity to horses. Their relationship is as solid and unquestioning as the seasons. They are practical folk, who know the value of work and have no understanding of simile or metaphor, still less poetry. When the young woman encounters Gilbert Horn, a miller unjustly hated for the economic power he holds over the village, she discovers a man whose education opens up the terrifying prospect of self-knowledge.

This is still the story you get, but Pauwels also gives us a whole lot more. On stage as well as Susan Vidler, as the young woman, Duncan Anderson, as her husband, and Owen Whitelaw, as the miller, there is a fourth figure, played by Vicki Manderson, who has a sprite-like presence, amplifying the subtextual passions one minute, playing a pregnant horse the next, even grabbing a microphone – yes, there are microphones – to deliver some of the text herself.

Together they are on a funfair-inspired set that has no direct bearing on the story but, in its imagery of muscularity and sexuality, resonates with Harrower’s primal themes. Add to this an eclectic soundtrack ranging from classical pieces to Petula Clark singing in French and you have a production that defiantly resists the play’s pre-industrial setting.

Occasionally the play gets caught in the crossfire, but more typically, this thrillingly theatrical production, acted with tremendous commitment, builds moments of real tension. It’s a challenge to anyone who likes their theatre cosy, predictable and polite, but that seems exactly like the kind of challenge the NTS should be laying down.

Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 14-16 June; The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 2 July 2011.

© Mark Fisher, 2011

Links

• National Theatre of Scotland
• Mark Fisher