A smouldering but serious love story
The Meeting Minerva Theatre, Chichester
We will not place our dependence on fleets and armies, but we will be peaceful in ourselves, in our words and our actions.” Charlotte Jones’s new play – her first in more than a decade – begins with a gathering of “Friends” in a Quakers meeting place in rural Sussex, circa 1805, and a declaration of pacifism amid the threat of French invasion. Braving hostility from locals, the Friends live apart – and on moral high ground – yet it’s not long before they’re riven by violent passions.
Jones – whose big calling-card remains her comically deft, supersmart West End hit Humble Boy (2001) – has written a serious, smouldering love story that touches on questions about female empowerment, religious conviction and the treatment of disability. It marks a welcome comeback. And it doesn’t seem fanciful to detect in the play’s fascination with the value Quakers place on silence, and the need to speak from deep within, a parallel to the process that Jones – who attended Quaker meetings for five years – has undergone in rediscovering her voice.
The heroine is Rachel, a stonemason’s wife whose supervigilant deaf mother lives with the couple and who has suffered three stillborn births, naming each dead boy Nathaniel. So when she encounters a handsome young redcoat (a deserter, we glean) called Nathaniel, it almost feels like divine providence.
She persuades her husband, Adam, to take the youth on as an apprentice; the interloper slips into a Quaker identity and thence into her arms. If they are discovered, he faces a court martial, but she risks being cast out, too. When his affections stray elsewhere, she must bitterly acquiesce or jeopardise them both.
The romantic and psychological tussle grips, with a satisfying hint of Poldark about it; there’s scope for a more in-depth and epic-scale TV outing. If there’s a frustration, it’s that the fevered military context really does fade into the background: the second half rather savours of women fighting over their menfolk.
The piece is well-researched and deeply felt – virtues answered by a richly evocative staging from director Natalie Abrahami that conjures a world of chalk and flint, beauty and privation.
Among a fine, committed crop of central performances, Lydia Leonard is wonderfully contained and quietly agonised as the dutiful, emotionally errant Rachel, while Jean St Clair is terrific too as her mute, marginalised, finally defiant mother.
As for Laurie Davidson as the mysterious, tousled heart-throb – well, he’s barely out of drama school and utterly compelling. Keep your eye on that one. Until Aug 11. Tickets: 01243 781312; cft.org.uk