Described as a feminist take on Twelve Angry Men, the play is set in rural England in 1759, where Sally Poppy (Haley Wong), a downtrodden young woman with a history of infidelity and theft, is sentenced to death.
Sally has been accused of murdering a child, her guilt hinging on the testimony of her distressed husband. Complicating matters, however, is her claim that she is pregnant, a condition that would commute her sentence and spare her being hanged before an angry mob. (In other words, while Sally’s own life is not deemed worth saving, the life of her unborn child is.) To help determine whether Sally is telling the truth, a jury of 12 women, including Lizzy, is summoned and locked in a room at the courthouse, accompanied by a bailiff named Mr. Coombes (Glenn Fitzgerald).
As tends to be the case in contemporary theater productions set in the distant past, the cast of jurors in The Welkin is markedly diverse. Though the play takes place in England, this is an international company of actors that speaks in no cohesive accent, a fact that is initially distracting, but becomes less so as the narrative progresses into thornier territory. Likewise, the dialogue, written in eighteenth-century parlance, takes a moment for the ear to adjust to—especially given the many, florid euphemisms used to describe a woman’s reproductive functions.
There is something unusual, perhaps even intimidating, about seeing 13 women on stage together—a conceit that the play leans into, asking us to consider what it means when a decision-making body is made up entirely of women. Do they fare any better than men?
