Knives in hens
By David Harrower
David Harrower's first produced play has become one of the most performed Scottish plays of all time.
The austere haunting quality of the play has transferred successfully to productions all over the world, in languages including Norwegian, German and Serbo-Croat.
Gallery
The original production:
Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, 1995, directed by Philip Howard.
The cast:
Young Woman, a fieldhand – Pauline Knowles
Pony William, a ploughman – Lewis Howden
Gilbert Horn, a miller – Michael Nardone.
What the play is about:
'I’m not a field. How’m I a field? What’s a field? Flat. Wet. Black with rain. I’m no field.'
The play is set in an unspecified God-fearing rural past where change is threatening and outsiders are viewed with suspicion.
A young woman is driven to kill her ploughman husband, Pony William, with the help of Gilbert Horn, an outsider and the local miller.
At the same time she discovers her independence and her ability to use language, travelling from ignorance to awareness.
'When the sun comes back the warm wind will blow on my face. When I look up I will see the sun shine bright on the sky. The clouds will ... be white.'
What we think:
David Harrower's intense rural drama was an immediate critical hit when it appeared in 1995, heralding the arrival of a stunning new talent. It is said to be the most performed Scottish play apart from 'Peter Pan'.
A summary of the plot makes it sound like a rural melodrama of the kailyard school. But on the page and in performance, this tale of language, lust, love, and murder has a haunting quality.
With a simple setting and a cast of three, 'Knives in hens' has been seen all over the world in many productions and languages. Harrower's universal themes, spare language and lightly-sketched setting have transferred easily around the globe.
What others have said:
'This daring, strangely subversive and complex play is full of quiet grace and passion. It marks a mature debut.'
– 'Daily Mail'.
'It seems to hit you on a subconscious level, as if by stripping back the language and the setting to its most austere, the playwright has tapped into a source of elemental power. Like a dream, "Knives in Hens" is a play you feel. Articulation comes later and is never adequate.'
– Mark Fisher, 'The Guardian'.
'It means the world to me. It's where I found my voice; the play in which I shed notions of how a play must be written that I'd held for a long enough time; the play that suggested I was maybe, just maybe, mastering this slippery craft. I could go on, bore you rigid – I won't, I've said more than enough. Words can kill things as much as enlighten.'
– David Harrower.
Other plays by David Harrower include:
- 'Kill the old, torture their young' (1998)
- 'Dark Earth' (2001)
- 'Presence' (2001)
- 'Six characters looking for an author' (2001)
- 'Ivanov' (2002)
- 'Tales from the Vienna woods' (2003)
- 'Blackbird' (2005)
- 'Mary Stuart' (2006)
- '365' (2008)
- 'Sweet nothings' (2010)
