Skip to main contentThe Fens is a flat expanse of land lying between East Anglia and Cambridgeshire in Britain. What was once a vast network of marshes, tidelands and islands (the high and near-dry cathedral city of Ely still considers itself an "isle") was drained in the 17th century to become farm fields. Accompanying this environmental catastrophe was the end of a culture, as the independent Fenfolk (a hearty lot who traveled over their waterland on stilts) found their way of life and the common land they shared destroyed for the sake of national demands for agriculture.
It was into this still damaged world that playwright Caryl Churchill came in 1982 to research what would become for her a "dialogue with a community." A committed socialist and feminist, Churchill wanted to reveal the inadequacies and injustices of Thatcher's Britain by looking at the nation's poorest laborers, the crop-picking Fenwomen, and to find the unofficial, oral history of their home. The result was Fen.
Sowelu Theater's production of this difficult play possesses all the raw power and fearlessness of the troupe's best work, and director Lorraine Bahr has beautifully crafted one of the season's finest pieces of theater. Still, there are problems that urgently need addressing in the performances.
Bahr's cast, all playing multiple roles, couldn't be better: Amanda Boekelheide, Brian Russell, Jenni Green, Jordy Oakland, Rhea Wolf and Susan Boyd. Yet even this crew of excellent actors is bogged down by attempts to approximate a Fenish dialect. There are too many moments when lines become incomprehensible, when the pronunciation of words (however misguided) seems to enjoy more focus than the words' meanings. Though Churchill adopted much of the idiomatic speech of the people for Fen, her intention was to create theatrical poetry with it, not documentary, and so a slavish devotion to accent is unnecessary.
Another problem is with the opening of the play. In an attempt to plot how far the Fensfolk's land has passed from their hands, Churchill uses a (now dated) Japanese businessman to set the stage. Confusingly, Bahr has Susan Boyd playing the role in working clothes. Worse, Boyd's attempt to sound Japanese comes close to an embarrassing cartoon of "orientalism," complete with bows and ingratiating smiles. The audience is left wondering how Chinese coolies came to Cambridge.
Still, there are unforgettable moments here: Boelkelheide's bar crawl, the ice storm, Oakland and Russell's frantic passion, Oakland's baleful ghost of crimes past, and the final moment of collective clarity when the people of the Fens find salvation.
Attention must also be paid to Elicia Beebe's simple but ingenious set: crop rows formed with potato sacks and overlain with a patchwork of homespun and spent finery, resembling those other unofficial histories of women, quilts. With movement direction from Heidi Carlson, the actors inhabit the furrows between these rows much like their proud characters, toiling in the ruts of a land they once strode above. Yet Bahr does raise them up again at the end, and, in doing so, the ruts in our own lives seem suddenly flooded by hope.
Sowelu Theater at the Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 230-2090. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 pm Sundays. Closes Dec. 15. $7-$15.
For another literary look at the Fens, read Graham Swift's excellent novel
WWeek 2015