Lydia Higman Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★★★

“With absolute trust between the performers, this is a tight and brilliant ensemble performance”

Gunter, is a well-deserved transfer for Dirty Hare’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023 production to the Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.

It is exciting and innovative theatre, wonderfully performed by three actors, and one historian who also plays the modern sound track live on stage.

As the audience arrive, the horrifying news film footage of the traditional modern-day, all-male Shrovetide Football match plays out on a screen – the brutal medieval ball game still played today.

The show is set in 1604 and is based on the true story of a Berkshire parish. Brian Gunter (Hannah Jarrett-Scott), the richest man in the village, kills the two young Gregory boys during the traditional and violent Shrovetide Football match. Because of Gunter’s power he gets away with murder. But when Elizabeth Gregory (Julia Grogan), the strong grieving mother, questions both Gunter and the law, the bad man shows his manipulative strength.

Gunter’s innocent daughter, Anne (Norah Lopez Holden), is suddenly bewitched, and of course, the witch hunt immediately points to Elizabeth and her female friends. So ensues the many trials of both Elizabeth – and indeed Anne.

As the story unfolds through song and physical theatre, the three actors each play multiple roles telling the tale of poor Anne Gunter. With absolute trust between the performers, this is a tight and brilliant ensemble performance – as the actors, wearing pristine white modern day football kits and the white stage set, gradually become covered in blood, mud, honey and gore.

Gunter has its quirk, as the historian Lydia Higman narrates the more historical facts – facts that are also typed in bold and lit up on the back projector. Sadly, Higman is unable to fill in the missing gaps – crucially that history does not know what became of Anne Gunter after the trials. There are no historical facts. Higman, even with her light touch, doesn’t add any value to the play by being on stage – apart from her rather fine musicality.

The piece is directed with beautiful minutiae by Rachel Lemon, who co-created the piece alongside Lydia Higman and Julia Grogan. There is slight overkill with the opening song’s repetition of the words “the bad man”, which is repeated throughout the show. We get it.

Gunter pertains to be feminist theatre, giving a voice to the unheard women in history whose stories were never told. And it is depressing that this is the same sorry story today, about every woman who has a bad man in her life and her voice is still not heard…. Not a lot has changed – and that is Gunter’s point.

Belly Up

Forge – The Vaults

Reviewed – 23rd February 2020

★★★★★

“Grogan and Higman’s script allows serious debate alongside gratifying comedy”

A word of warning passed down the long queue of people waiting to see the new play “Belly Up” at the VAULT Festival – “This is massively inappropriate!”

That didn’t stop a full house wanting to see Julia Grogan and Lydia Higman’s extraordinarily funny and ingeniously written piece, on at the Forge venue for just one night.

It covers similar ground to “The Welkin,” currently being staged at the National Theatre, but in its 60 minutes manages to be a better piece of work, gives a clearer perspective of the wider historical context and has more deep-rooted issues to raise about women’s rights through the ages.

Set at the end of the 18th Century, when George III was in the “middling” stage of his infamous madness, we are introduced to lesbian maidservant Liberty Whiteley (the show’s co-writer Julia Grogan, satisfyingly assured, winningly likeable and utterly credible) who is about to be hanged for murder.

We flash back a year to February 14th 1795 as the engagement party for her master’s conceited foppish son, Barnaby Wallace Croft, and her own sweetheart is being planned. As we see an increasingly outrageous Barnaby (a brilliantly awful creation by Michael Bijok) flirting with other women and generally being a dandy dick (“lay off the canapes as you’ll have a coq monsieur later!”) Liberty confesses in one of her audience asides, “You’ll probably guess who I murdered that night…”

When he tries to force himself upon her Liberty puts a permanent end to his advances: “It was Liberty Whitley in the parlour with the candlestick.”

Realising that she can earn a reprieve if she is pregnant Liberty “pleads the belly” – but then has to find a way of making her claim a reality while stuck in a women’s ward. The only way to escape being banged up in Newgate Prison is to, well, be banged up in Newgate Prison and the best chance on offer is to find a willing accomplice in the insanity ward (into which Liberty is immediately thrown on proclaiming, “I’m a woman and I deserve the right to vote!”).

There’s a wonderful array of colourful characters in this romp, all richly played by five actors, ranging from an S&M jailer (Bijok again) and tart with a heart cellmate Nancy (Anna Brindle, who also excels as Liberty’s lover) to the God-fearing fellow prisoner Keith (a sublime Matthew Grainger) and the resplendent “Mayfair prostitutes” serving up the prison grub (Grainger and Bijok). Annabel Wood is a helpful addition, underlining several of the historical, medical and legal niceties in her various roles.

Design (Hazel Low) is basic but fully functional. In a very limited acting area with little in the way of set, authentic costumes and occasional props (such as movable prison bars) serve their purpose surprisingly well.

Modern language is used effortlessly along with a wildly contrasting mix of musical styles (Noughties pop and a classical string version of Like a Virgin among the playlist, adeptly arranged and composed by Georgina Lloyd-Owen) but nothing seems in the slightest bit incongruous such is the flair and quality of the writing and extremely tight and polished direction by Lauren Dickson.

Grogan and Higman’s script allows serious debate alongside gratifying comedy, which is pleasantly daft without falling to the excesses of Carry On bawdiness.

This is a significant work that has much to say about the treatment of women, justice, choice and sacrifice as well as unjust systems that create victims. The final message about the fight having some optimistic outcomes through history but still not being over is as powerful as you will find in any full-blown drama, let alone a one-off fringe production beneath the railway tracks.

It will be a big disappointment and a real surprise if this Daring Hare Productions show doesn’t develop into considerably greater things. The expert team behind it is surely fearless enough to make it so.

Tag Archives: Lydia Higman

GUNTER

★★★★

Royal Court

GUNTER at the Royal Court

★★★★

“With absolute trust between the performers, this is a tight and brilliant ensemble performance”

GUNTER at the Royal Court

Reviewed on 6th April 2024

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Alex Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

COWBOIS | ★★★★★ | January 2024

MATES IN CHELSEA | ★★★ | November 2023

CUCKOO | ★★½ | July 2023

BLACK SUPERHERO | ★★★★ | March 2023

FOR BLACK BOYS … | ★★★★★ | April 2022

GUNTER