Tachwedd (November/The Slaughter) @ Theatre503 - Review
Hard to see the forest for the trees. ★★★
At Theatre503, Battersea, until 2nd November 2024.
Tickets from £6.
Rating: ★★★
Tachwedd bills itself as a narrative of mythology, land and survival, spanning across hundreds of years. Unfortunately, it tries to cram so much relatively mundane story into the two hours that the metanarrative never gets its chance to shine.
This play takes place over four time periods, with occasional glimpses into some primeval hunt. In 1742, the daughter of a rich man is romancing a poor but landed farmer; in 1902, a deeply religious mother struggles to pay rent to the church; in 1975, disaffected, laid-off industrial workers watch the IRA on the TV and consider their places in the world; in 2024, an author has written a book about her sister’s suicide and is now living in her home. To varying degrees, these are stories about land: the opportunities it brings, the obligations it places upon us and what it means when land changes. Each is individually compelling, but, as told, they’re hard to truly appreciate.
The main problem is fast and frequent switches between each time period, with the same actors in each and little or no set and cosume changes. It is hard to follow, we rely on accents or differently placed shawls to distinguish them. It doesn’t help that there are strong similarities between 1902 and 1975, with labour upheaval a subplot in each. The cast of four seems stretched by the quick changes, and on occasion one character bleeds into another, for example Carri Munn’s smug author Ffion still feels present for a crucial scene as Beca, an otherwise sympathetic nurse. The only actor that manages to avoid this is Glyn Pritchard, but his roles in 1742 and 1902 are much more marginal than the rest of the cast.
Each narrative has it’s own collection of themes- gender, the clergy, media, literacy, English colonisation, martyrdom- but the pace is so fast that none can be truly explored, instead all feeding into this land and myth metanarrative, which isn’t truly expanded. It relies upon dramatic scenes of a hunt signified by red light, which are impressive but don’t quite get us to the point. We come away with little new perspective on land or myth.
The staging (Rebecca Wood) is fascinating, with earth (or a simulation thereof) covering the stage throughout, frequently eaten by the cast. It’s a constant if slightly heavy handed reminder of the land theme. The stage is also hemmed in by a black wooden semi-circle, compressing the area of action and adding a claustrophobic feel to the affair, which heightens the tension especially in the 1902 narrative. The costuming (also Wood) leaves more to be desired. It’s a big ask, costumes that do not look anachronistic in either 2024 or 1752, and it’s not executed very well. Wood has chosen realistic clothing, each actor in a wardrobe that looks roughly right for one of the time periods but wrong in the others, this production would perhaps benefit from more theatrical costuming. The normal clothing costuming also makes it hard to change much between scenes, and small changes like adding a scarf sometimes make it hard to always keep track of when we are.
Tachwedd has good bones, but it needs to give the cast and audience more time to truly appreciate this dense narrative.
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