David Harrower’s theatrical fame is deeply rooted in this play, his debut, originally staged at the Edinburgh Traverse in 1995 and then transferred to London. Since then, Knives in Hens has been produced practically all over the world, its appeal lying in a unique combination of sparse but highly lyrical dialogue on one side, with very loose realism and limited staging details on the other, making it inherently beautiful but also flexible enough for almost any sort of adaptation. In reviewing terms, this means that things can either go very well or very badly - the director’s and actors’ shoulders all carry a considerable weight.

In the current Arcola production, things go remarkably well. Serdar Billis’ direction accompanies and excites a very strong cast into the kind of burning, intense atmosphere that gives the play its evoking power. The strangely disquieting love triangle that is the pivot of Harrower’s text (between a ploughman, his wife, and the village’s miller), with its out-of-time dialogue and dramatic ellipses, is rendered with accelerated heart-beat and intention, but without nervous anxiety. The actors’ movements and pauses are underlined by Maria Rijo’s beautiful cello music, flowing in violent waves and carrying the rhythm of everyone’s breath with it. While all three actors give more than competent performances, Jodie McNee, as the curious, fervently religious and yet independently-minded Sarah, is the force to be reckoned with. She proceeds with eyes and palms wide open, looking for names to everything under the sun and relentlessly examining life’s minutiae, eventually discovering how to fully inhabit her own force: ‘I know now I must find out the names for myself’.

Hannah Clark, who shone at the Arcola last summer with her design for Thyestes,  here covers the small floor of the Studio 2 with small, dark grains, in direct reference to the milling surroundings of the plot; throughout the evening, the grains are moved and swept around to create geometric lines, almost defining borders, and they remain discretely attached to the skin and the bare feet of the protagonists. But they are also a sea of black, soft punctuation marks, physical incarnations of commas and dots in a play very much concerned with language and words. Sarah’s naming is not only a religious reference, but also an appropriation of life through understanding; Harrower’s destination is the full delivery of her consciousness. Three wooden columns, as puritanically modest and tidy tree stumps, are the complementary geometric statements of the scene, as well as the creators of a number of thresholds.

As the plot develops, rather than focusing on the confrontation between the ploughman and the miller, which is perhaps the obvious choice, Billis lets that scene melt into the following one, in which Sarah is once against protagonist. The whole evening is coherently directed at showing how her naming quest is not only a religious reference, but also an appropriation of life through understanding; Harrower’s destination is the full delivery of her consciousness, and Billis does not stop for any sweetening concessions or sentimental distraction. One would struggle to point out another equally powerful and powerfully acted female role.

Till 27 February 2010