The Welkin explores how judicial system is weighted in favour of men

By Amit Roy

AT FIRST, the plot of The Welkin reminded me of the classic 1957 movie, 12 Angry Men, one of my all-time favourites.

In it, Henry Fonda urges his 11 fellow jurors in a hot, stifling room in America to at least discuss the evidence before sending a youth of 18 to the electric chair for allegedly stabbing his father to death. It is brilliant cinema which has stood the test of time. In 2013, I went to the Garrick to see a West End stage adaptation of the movie, with Martin Shaw (from TV’s The Professionals) taking on Fonda’s role. Tom Conti was also in the cast.

In The Welkin, the jury consists of 12 matronly women who have to decide whether a young woman is guilty of murder. All but one of them have other things to do, and believe it is an open-and-shut case and want to send off the prisoner to be hanged without too much debate. But there ends all resemblance to 12 Angry Men.

In fact, The Welkin – it is an olde English word for sky or firmament – ends less happily than 12 Angry Men in which one by one, the 11 jurors are persuaded, by the sheer weight of reasoned argument, to change their “guilty” verdicts to “not guilty”.

The underlying theme of The Welkin is the legal oppression of women and how a man’s evidence in a trial counts for so much more. The issue of violence against women remains a huge problem in most parts of the world, not least in India, where four men are awaiting execution for the gang rape of a 23-year-old student, who was fatally assaulted on a Delhi bus on December 16, 2012.

The Welkin, a new play by Lucy Kirkwood, is set in 1759 on the borders between rural Suffolk and Norfolk. Just to add myth, magic and superstition to the tale, Haley’s Comet, which appears every 75-76 years, had been seen in 1758.

For those who are interested, the last time Haley’s Comet was seen was in 1986, and it is projected to return in 2061 when Brexit will probably still be an issue.

The question confronting the 12 women who make up the jury is whether Sally Poppy (played by Ria Zmitrowicz) is guilty of the murder of a child with her lover, who has already been hanged for the crime. She returns home to tell her cuckolded husband that she is pregnant. It is on his word that Sally will be hanged. In any case, as the women meet to decide her fate, a mob outside is baying for her blood. As in 12 Angry Men, there isn’t much to discuss – if her husband says Sally is guilty, then it follows that she must be.

But there is a sticking point. If Sally is pregnant, as she says she is, then the baby, held to be innocent, cannot be killed with the mother. Sally would be spared and instead transported to a British colony, such as north America. But is she really pregnant or is she trying to escape the public spectacle of being hung, drawn and quartered by pretending to be with child?

The strong, regional accent is a bit too strong and regional and baffled me for much of the time. I did wonder if the play would have been any less powerful had it been in received BBC English. Probably not. Still, I got the sense of what was going on even if I did not always grasp what was being said.

The one matron who is determined to save Sally is Elizabeth Luke, played by the high-profile actress Maxine Peake – she will be remembered as the barrister Martha Costello in the BBC legal drama Silk. As a midwife, Elizabeth had delivered Sally and is determined to save her, even though the latter does her best to be disliked by the gathered women.

There is diversity in the casting. One of the women, Peg Carter, is played by Aysha Kala, who featured in Channel 4’s 2015 drama, Indian Summers, in which she was cast as Aafrin Dalal’s (Nikesh Patel) feisty sister, Sooni Dalal.

I found the ending harrowing in the extreme. One cannot even imagine the brutality to which the victim was subjected on that Delhi bus seven years ago. India uses the death penalty only in the “rarest of rare” cases, but there will be an outcry in India if the four men are spared the death sentence.

In The Welkin, there is detailed biological discussion of a woman’s body. For example, Sally tries repeatedly to express milk in order to prove she is pregnant. As the play progresses, we learn more about the personal lives and the prejudices of the women who have to decide whether Sally lives or dies. When they summon a doctor, it has to be a male doctor. The medical equipment he uses on Sally almost resembles instruments of torture.

The programme carries an article by Baroness Helena Kennedy, one of the best-known QCs in the land who is director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute – I spotted her a couple of rows in front of me.

She writes: “It is not surprising legal systems the world over fail women; law is created by those who wield power.

“Until 100 years ago, the Common Law came from three sources – precedent developed by privileged male judges in the senior courts, statute law developed by the legislature in a male parliament and through commentary in our academies of law which also excluded women.”

She concludes: “The Welkin is an old story and a today story. And thereby hangs a tale. A lot has happened in the law, but not enough has changed.”

The Welkin is on at the National’s Lyttelton Theatre until May 23. It will be broadcast to 700 cinemas in the UK and many more worldwide as part of NT Live on May 21.