Review of Husk at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester.
Intruders spotted in a garden, a knife glinting in the darkness, unanswered questions, and a gathering storm. Thriller-style hooks draw the audience into Rubert Hill’s knotty tale of a man released from prison, with unresolved business to settle in his hometown.
Husk is Hill’s first stage play and he also plays Ray, the ex-con intent on revenge.
Ray’s life, past and present, is entangled with Graeme his former employer, Graeme’s daughter Beth (a friend from school) and her husband Clark.
We also witness Ray’s struggles in prison, and a friendship that will transform him.
Flowing back and forward through time, it’s the sort of multi-layered storytelling that works well on the small screen, and it’s no surprise that Hill’s play started life as a script for television.
Director Joseph Houston skillfully ensures the narrative entices but never confuses, as the various strands play out. Changes in setting and timeframe, are clearly but subtly marked through Grant Archer’s evocative video design – with settings dreamily glimpsed as if through the view finder of a camera, the digital date stamp hovering in the corner.
Everything is hemmed in by the plain solid metal-like walls of Sorcha Corcoran’s set. It can feel constraining, and many of the characters seem trapped, not just within a prison cell – but in a loveless marriage, a failing mind, or an overpowering addiction.
Ray’s destructive relationship with alcohol flows through the play – blotting out the pain of his messy childhood, blurring his judgement and messing up his first few years in prison.
Hill’s performance is peppered with telling, and often moving, detail – head bowed and shamefully shrinking inwards as a vulnerable child, or wearing a goonish hollow smirk as he knocks back another drink on a teenage night out. Sober, and just out prison, Ray cautiously clutches a proffered can of beer as if it might burn his skin – and then later, ever so nervously beams wide with delight in response to some kind words from Beth.
As Beth, Danielle Henry is a wonderfully calm presence, her performance serves to steady the busy narrative. Worrying about her father’s health, navigating a choppy marriage, or helping Ray get back on his feet, Henry’s Beth takes things in her stride. In a role that might have descended into saintliness, Henry offers instead someone wholly relatable – a woman sure of herself, unphased by the unexpected, and unfussily compassionate.
Husk is a play in love with books, words, and reading. Beth enjoys Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith and the lyrics of the Spice Girls. Ray quotes from Romeo and Juliet, the language mirroring his sense of despair – but he also finds solace in the pages of Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë.
Prison brought Ray into contact with books. Given to him as part of his mentoring sessions with fellow prisoner Stan. If David McCreedy’s Stan wasn’t behind bars already, he might have been at risk of ending up there for stealing the show. A no-nonsense short-tempered hard man, with a penchant for the Barbara Streisand songbook, Stan is determined that Ray will “plan his path to freedom.” The very definition of tough love, Stan also has the funniest lines – and McCreedy does not waste a syllable of them.
There are other laughs to be had in Hill’s play, despite its subject matter it is far from being all darkness. Pacy and well-written, it flows smoothly and confidently forward, tying up threads as it goes.
Frustratingly, it overreaches itself at one point. When Ray pushes the self-destruct button in the middle of a rough boozer, the sudden shift in language and tone is too much, and the scene feels like a playwright’s calling card rather than a properly thought through expression of the character’s feelings – the voice on stage becomes Hill’s rather than Ray’s.
Fortunately, the play and production are strong enough to absorb that sequence and smoothly move on. With its richly realised performances, thoughtful staging and engaging storylines, Husk heads confidently towards its final perfectly pitched sun-drenched moments. As its characters step into the bright summer light, reality blurs – and life flickers with possibilities.
Performance seen on 26 September 2024.
Husk runs at Hope Mill Theatre until 29 September 2024. Then at The Dukes Lancaster from 2 to 3 October 2024.
Images by Shay Rowan.
Circles & Stalls 