"Pull them sleeves up, Miller"Rather amusingly, Hackney Council's newsletter refers to this play as Hens with Knives, a completely different Orwellian prospect, one wonders, and a possible new commission for someone! Knives in Hens as this play is more commonly known, was my first experience in the studio space at the rear of the Arcola, and an interesting one it is too. The first play written by David Harrower, who had success with his most recent play Blackbird, this is a look at the role of language in intellectual awakening. An uneducated young woman, trapped by marriage in a closed and superstitious community, develops an intense relationship with the village outcast, a miller. He reads and writes and so is distrusted by the villagers, but offers the woman a route to her own intellectual and sexual awakening, away from the life to which she is accustomed.
Jodie McNee's Woman is nicely portrayed, sensitively showing the potential aroused in her by the new connection in her life: her increasing ability to name things, setting herself free and open to what she might become is a nice judged journey. As the agent of change in her life, Phil Cheadle's handsome miller is laden with enigmatic temptation and Nathaniel Martello-White (recently impressive in Innocence at the same theatre) as her unyielding husband was also good.