The Welkin
by Lucy Kirkwood
Directed by Sarah Benson
Atlantic Theatre
June 9, 2024
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.

This has to be the most gruesome, vile, horrifying play that I have seen in a good long time.  It is bloodier than many of those bloody Irish plays!  Set in 1759, on the night of Halley’s Comet passing, a dozen rural women are enlisted to decide the fate of a young woman (a horrible human being herself) convicted of murdering the young daughter of her wealthy employer.  The alleged murderer claims that she is pregnant and, if true, she will escape being hanged in the public square.  Thus, the men of the town have locked 12 matrons of the town in a room with the alleged murderer to determine if she is indeed pregnant and thus innocent.