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Ive been waiting for quite a while for Lucy KirkwoodsThe Welkinto make its westward pass over the Atlantic.
How do we bequeath something different from what weve been given?
Shes got incredible nerve, but she can also access an almost clownlike frazzled vulnerability.
Just watchEve stab Villanelleand completely freak herself out.
The Welkinintroduces us to its twelve-woman jury through a beautifully choreographed swearing-in sequence.
Later on, shes blunter still: I did not come here in love.
I come here in rage, being as I knew this building could not be decent to her.
It was not built for her.
It was not built for none of us.
If you hear sickening echoes in Lizzys words, youre not alone.
I dont know, Sally replies, her voice heavy with weird prophecy.
I think maybe I dreamed it.
Benson conjures this destabilizing temporal miscibility both in the performances of her ensemble and in her productions design.
Theres no BBC-esque adoption of some supposedly accurate 1750s Suffolk accent.
Instead, every actor speaks assertively with their own natural inflections unless the script otherwise demands it.
Whats especially intriguing here is that Voyce and Benson are playing not only with time but with gender.
Who might Sally have been in a world that didnt throw her on the scrap heap at birth?
She must look to the Welkin, sniffs the unsympathetic Charlotte at Sallys impending fate.
There is no earthly help for her now.
But Lizzy sees it another way: It is a poor apparatus for justice.
But it is what we have.
The sky outside that window and our own dignity beneath it.
Kirkwoods play has no comfort to give, but it has the toughest kind of hope.
In the evening, it turns into a pre-show bar.
Theaters, take note: This is what the people want.
And right now, under the sensitive direction of co-artistic leader Morgan Green, the Wilmas gotHilma.
Hilma, writes Green in her directors note, was not interested in authorship.
Its also taken too long to get there, and along the way weve lost steam.
Her work had no antecedent, yet aspects ofHilmas musical and visual vocabulary have too many.
But do they not try?
The imperfections ofHilmadont diminish its aspirations or its strange beauties.
