★★★★

“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.

HIR at the Park Theatre

★★★★

“Felicity Huffman making her UK stage debut is mesmeric as Paige”

HIR pronounced “here” is a story about place, and in Pulitzer and Tony-nominee Taylor Mac’s darkly absurdist play it is about home, in this shockingly good production. The brilliant cast is led by the multi award winning American actress Felicity Huffman.

The prodigal son, Isaac (Steffan Cennydd) returns home from the Afghan war. Home is the place that Isaac couldn’t wait to leave when he joined the marines. Home is the place he sent dead soldiers back to in a box. Home is the place he dreamt about, and home is the place he is desperate to return to. But everything about his home is different.

Not him, not her, but hir is the preferred gender pronoun of his teenage younger sister, Max (Thalía Dudek), who is no longer his sister but his transgender / genderqueer sibling. His father (Simon Startin) is no longer his abusive father, but a dribbling stroke victim in a nightie, with a clown face and neon pink wig. And his mother (Huffman), who calls Isaac simply I, has become a not so batty, woke and merciless woman. Their quickfire chat and actions in this claustrophobic home knows no bounds as they try to look to a future.

Felicity Huffman making her UK stage debut is mesmeric as Paige from the moment the lights go up on their filthy, messy, shabby box of a house, menacingly built over landfill. Making her husband “shut the door” is torturous, made hilarious by the amount of times Huffman can make those three words sound so different. Paige’s deep set and sadistic revenge cruelty on her now pathetic husband is at times monstrous; as Huffman sprays him with a water bottle, like he is a disobedient dog, but still you laugh – to begin with. Huffman’s timing is faultless.

“more than yet another play about a dysfunctional family”

The cast play their roles with absolute conviction as: toxic masculinity, identity, mental illness, PTSD, raging hormones, disability, gender fluidity, emasculation, abuse and drugs, somehow all get their moment without being preachy in this firecracker four hander.

Thalía Dudek as the titular Hir is all testosterone and bravado, as hir convincingly proves that the Mona Lisa is transgender. Dudek also shows the character’s vulnerability and desperation to have hir brother’s traditionally masculine approval, again as the audience laughs – to begin with.

Masterfully directed by Steven Kunis who brings Hir to life, making it more than yet another play about a dysfunctional family. Hir might not quite have the shock value regarding identity, that Taylor Mac intended, when it first opened nearly a decade ago, but it still packs a punch. Set and costume designer Ceci Calf creates an extraordinary theatrical moment at the end of act one as the set closes ranks, as the 1960s pop song Little Boxes plays. And let’s not forget the hard working stage management team, who have a massive change to handle during the interval.

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:

GUNTER

GUNTER

HIR at the Park Theatre

★★★★

“Felicity Huffman making her UK stage debut is mesmeric as Paige”

“more than yet another play about a dysfunctional family”