Designer Verity Quinn’s set featured a large structure of pale-coloured wood that was at times the infamous barn, but also an assortment of rural cottages and country houses that made up the parish of Polstead. On either side of the stage were two more wooden structures that at first looked innocuously like more barn architecture, but also started to resemble a pair of gallows. The all-female cast were in timeless country clothing, sometimes doubling as more affluent characters in the Empire line dresses and gentlemen’s top hats that we know from a hundred Jane Austen adaptations – but this was no social comedy. Zoe Spurr’s lighting design had a lot of mellow golden sunshine – and also a dramatically convincing barn fire on stage.
Director Hal Chambers made excellent use of his ensemble cast, with a particularly striking use of getting them to breathe together in unison at pointed moments. He found the humour in places – actors playing horses was one such area – so that the audience could breathe as well, and be re-absorbed. Rebecca Randall’s movement direction also focused on the ensemble: the cast were frequently a whirling mass of bodies, spinning from a country dance to a scene of childbirth, and the cast’s beautiful singing voices were arranged in a cappella songs by musical director Luke Potter.
Elizabeth Crarer led the cast as Maria Marten. She had a strident, spiky relationship with the audience who she regularly directly addressed: Maria’s assumption was that everybody had come specifically to the Oldham Coliseum to judge her. Having first walked on stage as a long-dead corpse, replete in blood and injuries, Crarer’s Maria was cleaned up and taken back through a very ordinary girlhood and young womanhood that thousands of other country women would have experienced at that time. She was a little unusual in that she could read and write, and had the hunger to use her intellect that could not be satisfied in that environment, and Crarer added that restless energy to her performance.
Sarah Goddard, as the most mature cast member, was in strong support as Maria’s stepmother Ann. A low-status woman who seemed always one breath away from starvation or the workhouse, Ann timorously pattered about the stage, and had moments of silently-endured pain that were very moving. (Goddard is also delightful at horse impersonations!)
A cluster of young women from the village were Maria’s friends, rescuers, confidantes, and avengers. Hanora Kamen was extremely good as both Sarah, a cheerfully earthy villager with a number of children by different fathers, and Lady Cooke, a well-meaning but snotty aristocrat who likes visiting the poor on the second Thursday of every month. Bethan Nash was warm and generous as both Theresa, who marries badly, and Peter Matthews, a wealthy young gentleman in love with Maria. Jessica Dives was taut and angular as Phoebe, who did not accept grief from anyone. Susie Barrett was very strong as both Lucy, convinced that religion and virtue would always save the day, and Thomas Corder, a slimy opportunistic young man in pursuit of Maria.
Very interestingly, nobody portrayed the actual murderer (who was Thomas’s brother William Corder), and the murder itself was not shown either. Playwright Beth Flintoff comments in the programme notes: “So much theatre and TV features violence against women – a lot of TV shows seem to begin with a woman’s beautiful, dead body. I don’t think it’s helpful. We need to start again with the narrative.”
And I’ll let her have the last word on that.
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 22.3.22
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