Knives in Hens, theatre review: Dark, earthy and admirably strange

The memorably odd title of David Harrower’s play invites curiosity. It’s in fact a reference to the power of language — which, as one character puts it, skewers reality as surely as a blade opens up a hen’s stomach. The image, abrupt and visceral, captures the brutality of this vision of a pre-Industrial Britain haunted by superstition and the threat of violence.

Here it’s interpreted by Yaël Farber, making her Donmar Warehouse debut. The acclaimed South African director received poor reviews in May for her funereal take on the story of Salomé at the National Theatre, but in this more intimate space achieves her trademark mix of potent physicality, precise choreography and enigma.

Harrower’s play, a hit when it premiered in 1995, uses curtly forceful language to evoke the starkness and raw simplicity of an obscure farming community. A nameless young woman plucks chickens and cleans carrots. She knows the words required for her daily chores, yet has no grasp of the rich possibilities of metaphor.

Her husband is ploughman William (a gruff and muscular Christian Cooke), who controls her body and especially her mouth, defining the boundaries of her world.

But when he sends her with some sacks of corn to widowed local miller Gilbert, her inquisitive instincts surface.

Matt Ryan’s brooding and often inscrutable Gilbert is a literate, quietly passionate man. The sight of his pen wakens her sense of what she’s missing — and Judith Roddy reveals the intensity of her feelings with a blazing directness.

As a portrait of the dangers of self-discovery, the production is unsettling. While there’s too little erotic tension and its austerity at times feels portentous, it’s dark, earthy and admirably strange.

Until Oct 7, Donmar Warehouse; donmarwarehouse.com