Adapted from Robin Redbreast by John Griffith Bowen
Writer Daisy Johnson
Co-Creators Maxine Peake, Sarah Frankcom and Imogen Knight
Director Sarah Frankcom
NORTH WAREHOUSE, AVIVA STUDIOS
ROBIN/RED/BREAST continues the highly successful collaboration between Factory International and Maxine Peake, Sarah Frankcom and Imogen Knight which began in 2013 with The Masque Of Anarchy. Last year’s Manchester International Festival saw Peake in a reading of the dystopian 70’s novel They which further cemented her artistic reputation as an accomplished actress and a beguilingly natural storyteller. This time the artistic team behind the new production company MAAT (Music, Art, Activism and Theatre) re-examine Robin Redbreast which first featured on the BBC in 1970 as part of the iconic Play For Today series. This piece of folk horror is uncomfortably pertinent as women are once again having to fight for their bodily autonomy and the right to make our own reproductive choices.
For any of us who grew up in a rural community there is an absolute normal in the strangeness of folklore and ritual. Cures handed down by the seventh son of a seventh son and sneaked into hospitals by desperate relatives or teenagers spat on and then blessed by a total stranger living in a remote house up the mountain as a cure for chickenpox were not at all unusual…or perhaps my upbringing was not as mundane as I have presumed. The Seventies produced a plethora of folk horror stories focusing on rural rituals especially around fertility and sacrifice which coincided with huge social revolutions for women around contraception and abortion. In this production Norah played by Maxine Peake is an independent woman who feels confident about her own choices regarding relationships, family and career. Choosing to opt out of city life after a relationship breakdown she finds herself alone in a cottage seeped in history where the rustling of mice and the whirr of wasps seem to open up crevices in time through the ancient walls. As we listen on headphones to Norah’s thoughts it is clear her sense of her own identity may be being threatened by sinister elements in the community around her.
Photo credit: Tristram Kenton
The staging by Lizzie Clachan is stunning in its simplicity. Walking into the cool dimness of the North Warehouse with its huge ceiling, the wooden frame of the cottage nestled on a rich earth floor feels like magically coming across a forest cathedral. All pathways leads toward it and staged in the round with audience on benches it exudes the feeling of a natural amphitheatre. The audience don headphones and are immersed in the sound of birdsong, scuttling mice and the thoughts that come racing through Norah’s mind as loneliness, lust and looming fears begin to creep in like the bindweed that invades the sanctity and safety of her cottage walls. When the febrile dancing abates and the cottage is suddenly ripped away there is nothing left but the dank, rich earth of Mother Nature merging with the prone form of Norah asleep on the forest floor.
The music by Gazelle Twin blends beautifully with the dreamy poetry of writer Daisy Johnson who has also worked on Viola’s Room, the latest immersive production by Punchdrunk. There is a very surreal feel to this production further enhanced by elements such as a female brass band who silently observe Norah and are clad in vivid red and white band uniforms that may evoke a group of Robin Redbreasts yet also a female army who may or may not protect Norah from impending threat. The langorous choreography by Imogen Knight adds to the atmosphere as we observe Norah like a character from a fairytale awaking in this cottage, going about her chores and coupling in the woods with a handsome forester.
Maxine Peake draws in the audience as she moves around her cottage home, suitably vexed as she scrubs menstrual blood from her bedsheets and later perplexed as her contraceptive cup has seemingly vanished. Listening to her flurry of thoughts through headphones makes for a potent connection to the character so when she finally speaks aloud to the audience it feels like we might really know Norah or indeed perhaps Maxine. This could be any woman and that is where the true fear lies…rising like the torrent of water that threatens to wash away homes, hopes and security like a deluge of miscarriage blood or the tumultuous waters that may drown a mother or her child in a flimsy refugee boat.
Peake is at her very best when speaking directly with an urgent softness that evokes inclusion and intimacy. Huddled in a circle on blankets the young women silently listen as she speaks of abortion choices, miscarriage traumas and the brutality of the lottery that occurs everyday in a maternity unit. Women bleed whether they abort, miscarry or give birth. They do not know if they will love unconditionally or struggle to feel anything or veer between fierce love and the overwhelming desire to put him down…whatever that may mean at any one time. In such a lottery of joy and despair it is terrifying enough to be a woman without additionally fearing others may try to enforce their choices and beliefs on us.
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