Mutton features rarely in this new play by Chris Singleton. A significant part of the plot centres on a hen that lays prophetic eggs. Is Leeds-based community theatre Brave Words making an early entry into panto season? Oh no, it’s not! The action is loosely based on the life – and death by hanging – of the real-life historical figure, Mary Bateman, also known as the Yorkshire Witch.
Where Shakespeare gave us his “weird sisters” with no backstory, in the centuries since it has become more usual to look at the psychological, economic and social conditions that make women self-identify as witches or contribute to them being accused of witchery. The renowned playwright Joanna Baillie demonstrated in her 1836 play Witchcraft that shaping this complex subject matter into a populist dramatic form is not so easy to do. Singleton, here, runs into the same difficulty.
Bateman, in an engaging performance by Kathryn Hanke, stops the hangman in order to speak directly to us – both as audience members and as spectators at the grisly event. Three other actors play the dozen or so other characters whom Bateman encounters on her route to the gallows – including the prophesying hen (puppet construction by Kathleen Yore; direction by Lucy Campbell). Scenes, introduced and commented on by Bateman, demonstrate the wickedness of male mill owners to female staff, of landlords to tenants, of husbands to wives; the difficulties faced by a poor woman trying to survive in a harsh world.
Singleton’s points may be simple – society is patriarchal, women are oppressed, people believe what they want to – but are not without relevance. Short, sharp scenes would suit subject matter to agit-prop-style form; instead, over-explication and unnecessary extended sections blunt the fun. Less fat, more meat would give us more to chew over.
Mutton is touring until 29 November
Photograph by Ant Robling