Ploughman is in a pickle
DIRECTOR Yael Farber took an absolute lashing from critics earlier this year for her histrionic production of Salome at the National Theatre.
Undeterred, she’s done something similar here with a new play by David Harrower, set in what seems to be a medieval village.
Instead of drawing on established myth, Harrower concocts his own: in which a burly ploughman and his wife get involved in a ménage a trois with a shady miller.
We’re in a pre-industrial world where characters address each other by trade names — ‘ploughman’, ‘miller’, ‘woman’ — and sentences are short but not sweet.
Ploughman and wife live in peace with the land — until she discovers the magic of written words thanks to the miller, and they turn on her husband, who is servicing more than just the horses. There are striking images, notably when the woman covers her hands in black ink from the miller’s pen; and when the miller pours freshly ground flour over her body.
Christian Cooke’s macho ploughman spits and scratches his crotch. Judith Roddy is perpetually incensed as ‘woman’. Matt Ryan’s miller is ruefully aloof. I found myself amused by the air of foreboding, but the atmosphere hangs heavy, and you laugh at your peril.