The Welkin at The Questors is Not Twelve Angry Women
Lucy Kirkwood says her play isn't a remake of a male classic
A young woman stands accused of a heinous crime
October 23, 2024
The playwright behind a new play to be staged at The Questors has dismissed any parallels with the film ‘Twelve Angry Men’ despite the plot centring round an all-woman jury.
The Welkin unfolds in 1759, where a young woman stands accused of a heinous crime and faces the death penalty.
In a desperate bid to save her life, she claims to be pregnant. This claim compels an unusual assembly of twelve women, drawn from their everyday lives, to determine her truthfulness—and ultimately her destiny.
In an era when men wielded nearly all legal and societal power, this gathering of women to judge one of their own is both a rare and unsettling challenge to the status quo.
Writer, Lucy Kirkwood, said "I wanted to fight for The Welkin to be its own thing, a show focussing on a woman voice, it's not a remake of a male classic.”
This production will be directed by Pam Redrup whose past credits include Low Level Panic where she brought an all-female production both on stage and backstage to Questors.
The Welkin has garnered critical acclaim, with the New York Times calling it “a sombre yet witty play set in 18th-century England ... a clever perversion of a courtroom drama,” and the Times Literary Supplement praising it as “a delicious blend of eighteenth-century satire, twentieth-century morality play, and fizzy postmodern inventiveness.”
It is being performed from 1-9 November and tickets are available on The Questors Theatre website.
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