THE FARMER’S WIFE by Keith Richardson

THE FARMER’S WIFE has at its heart an epic performance from the actor Christine Entwisle (also a writer and director of her own work), one of the three central roles in the production. The two other main characters (played by Eireann Devlin and Roberta Kerr) are excellent. 

But Entwisle (Older), playing the current-day farmer’s wife, as opposed to the past, Kerr (Oldest), and the future, Devlin (Young), fits into her role like a plough to the land, and commands the stage.  

The result is quietly brilliant.  

High above the simple kitchen set, cottony, sheet-like clouds are hung to provide a simulation of sky as the action occasionally takes you on imaginary visits to the surrounding fell and the sounds of farm life, while an equally imaginary farm dog occasionally runs wild, creating another kind of havoc in the kitchen. 

The Oldest’s domain and the set of the play – beyond those flights of fancy onto the land – is that same farm kitchen, but her realm of interest is much wider, dealing with themes that have relevance not just in farming, but also in the broader world of work and life, embracing the environment, cultural changes, community, the passage of time. 

While much of the dialogue is about weighty issues, the play has a lighter touch. There is much to enjoy, and it has its laugh out loud moments, the best arguably being the hilariously impromptu song and tabletop dance routine to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” 

The song is highly appropriate here because a central theme is the survival of a farm and a way of life that stretches back over the generations, all the way down the centuries from the arrival of the Norse invaders on these shores and the time when they built the fell farms and gave Cumberland and the Lakes its distinctive ‘Old Norse’ dialect and place names; not forgetting the age-old and highly symbolic breed, the Herdwick sheep.  

It is a story as long and as old as the drystone walls that snake their way for hundreds of miles over Lakeland.

So, for a part of it to potentially end in a farm sale and with the swift fall of a gavel in the early years of the 21st Century, is massive. 

The possibility that the family farm is to be sold as the farmer’s wife (and presumably her husband) struggle to make it work under a weight of paperwork and endless hard graft, eight days a week and counting, forms the backbone of the play. And the way this resonates among the family. The Older is buckling under the strain and much of the drama comes from her interaction with the Oldest and the Young as the latter promotes her views for the future and the former drops pearls of wisdom. 

The Farmer’s Wife is a clever production, smartly executed at pace with seamless switches between time zones. Its beginning and end come full circle to a neat, unexpected finish. I will not reveal the ending, but suffice to say that it is sad / happy and provides hope. And chocolate. 

As the Older attempts to encourage her daughter to envisage a different future away from the farm (with the potential sale of the farm looming) it soon becomes apparent that the Young wants to stay and make her own way on the farm, introducing new ideas to make it work. 

Part of the mother’s attempt to show her daughter another way is to dwell on an interest in writing and the daughter’s role in an amateur production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’  

Beyond the issues faces farming today, ‘The Farmer’s Wife’ touches upon the poisoning of the soil, as opposed to a more natural way of working the land, and the negative impact of conflict where quick returns and short-termism result in lasting damage for the environment; where irises no longer bloom and the soil is barren. 

This had real meaning, relevant to a modern-day world destroyed by climate change and echoed through the lines recited by the daughter from Shakespeare’s play: 

“The winds, piping to us in vain, as in revenge, have sucked up from the sea contagious fogs which falling in the land have every pelting river made so proud that they have overborne their continents. The ox hath stretched his yoke in vain. The ploughman lost his sweat and the green corn hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard. 

“The fold stands empty in a drowned field. And crows are fatted with murrain flock . . . the seasons alter: hoary headed frosts fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose . . . 

The spring, the summer, the chiding autumn, angry winter changed their wonted liveries, and the mazed world. By their increase, now knows not which is what. 

And this same progeny of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension. We are their parents and original.” 

*The world premiere of ‘The Farmer’s Wife’, directed by Liz Stevenson, is staged in the main house at The Theatre by the Lake until Saturday, October 10. It is written by Hannah Khalil and inspired by the memoir written by Helen Rebanks.