Experimental side to play’s revival
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DAVID Harrower’s gripping three-hander "Knives In Hens" quickly achieved the status of a contemporary classic.
The play was first staged at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1995, and has been produced all the over world in the ensuing decades. It was Harrower’s first play, written out of frustration in 1993 at the difficulties of getting new Scottish work on stage at that time.
The setting is pre-industrial but not particularly specific in historical time or place. The action revolves around three characters — a female referred to only as the Young Woman, her ploughman husband, Pony William, and Gilbert Horn, the local miller.
In this new production from the National Theatre of Scotland, those roles will be taken by Susan Vidler, Duncan Anderson and Owen Whitelaw.
All three have featured in previous work for the NTS. Whitelaw was also in the cast for Harrower’s "365", which was first seen at Eden Court in 2008 ahead of its Edinburgh Festival premiere.
"They are hugely different plays, and the process in creating them has been completely different as well," Whitelaw explained.
"With ‘365’ the play was developed over seven weeks in the rehearsal room, with David writing every day and supplying new bits of script all the time, while ‘Knives In Hens’ is obviously an existing work that has become a contemporary classic."
While "365" was directed by the NTS’s artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, the new production of "Knives In Hens" is directed by a slightly unlikely choice, Lies Pauwels, an associate of experimental Belgian theatre company, Victoria.
By her own admission, Pauwels is not used to working with a set text. Her background lies in a different approach to theatre.
"I come from a background in devised theatre, both as a director and an actress," she said.
"In Belgium we do not have a strong tradition of playwriting, as there is here. This chance to work with a piece of repertoire, and especially a play as strong and gripping as ‘Knives in Hens’, is very exciting for me."
Owen Whitelaw acknowledged that the director has brought her own style and techniques to the process.
"It has been such a different process for me to work in this way — here in Scotland we are used to telling stories all the time, and her way of working is not so story-led, it’s a little more abstract," he said.
"She doesn’t usually work with a text, so that has been a bit of challenge for her, but one she has met brilliantly, I think. Because it has been a new process for everyone, it has been very full on, but also very inspiring. I think the combination of the text and her more emotional, abstract approach to the production has worked really well and will be unique."
The play is intensely dramatic and a work that Whitelaw feels both the actors and the audience have to ease their way into.
"I think it’s just in the nature of the way that David has written the play that it sneaks up on you a bit — you are not quite sure what it is you are dealing with at first," he suggested.
"The language is quite complex and rich and it takes a while to get to grips with what is going on. There is a lot that is unsaid or lies behind the text, but with any great piece of writing it comes back to basics. It would be a bit of a dead end to try too hard to show the underlying messages or unspoken things, and it would be very easy to overdo that. It’s about saying the words and playing the words, and you realise it is all in there — the writer has done that for you."
Whitelaw’s credits for the NTS include "Peter Pan", "Our Teacher’s A Troll", "Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off" and "Cockroach". He is in no doubt of the benefits of the company.
"The NTS has been instrumental in allowing me to be a professional actor," he said. "They gave me my first job, and they have been really supportive ever since I graduated from the RSAMD. I think they are very brave — they take risks, and that is not an easy thing to do as a national company."
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Knives In Hens" is at the OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, from Tuesday to Thursday at 7.30pm.
