Reviewed By Melinda Schupmann

" Knives in Hens"

presented by Rude Guerrilla Theater Company at the Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2:30 p.m. (Also Thu. 8 p.m., Jun. 9.) May 20-Jun. 11. $10-18. (714) 547-4688.

David Harrower's unsettling and moody fable is a suitable choice for this young repertory company, whose reputation is that of a group willing to take chances, counting on its audiences to like the challenge of edgy, provocative productions. Poetic and mysterious, this play confronts viewers on several levels--moral, sexual, and intellectual.

In an unnamed place in the distant past live a ploughman, Pony William (Vince Campbell), and his young wife (Christine Tanabe). She is untutored but striving to learn; Harrower's use of halting phrases underscores her budding awareness of her world. Taught by her husband to despise the local miller (Aurelio Locsin), she nonetheless must visit him to have their grain milled into flour. Glimpsing that the miller has greater knowledge than she--he reads books and writes in journals--she journeys beyond the confines of her life with the ploughman. The miller hints that Pony's nickname may be related to his unnatural relationship with his horses, one mare in particular. Eventually, the two do away with the ploughman, but it isn't the happy ending of a fairy tale.

There is humor in Harrower's work, though in the context of the dark and shadowy world of the village, it seems a self-conscious intrusion. Campbell is a believable ploughman, practical, but with a sensual awareness that he uses to tempt the miller and his wife. Locsin, as the miller, is detached but suitably sardonic, and Tanabe acquits herself well as she grows more sophisticated.

In his solo directorial debut, Scott Barber manages the tone of the piece well, but a few scenes, particularly the ones in which the principals are nude, seem obligatory and mechanical. Part of that can be attributed to Harrower's stilted dialogue, but blame must also be laid at the feet of the actors and director for presenting passion as passionless. Barber's stark set design and lighting add immeasurably to the atmosphere of ambiguity and inscrutability.

LA Times
Nuanced work in Harrower parable

Strange fascination pervades the festival caviar aura of "Knives in Hens" at the Rude Guerrilla Theater in Santa Ana. Since its Edinburgh premiere in 1995, David Harrower's raw, poetic study of the consequences of knowledge has become an international, much-translated postmodern classic.

Playwright Harrower, acclaimed for his translations of Chekhov, Buchner and Pirandello, adopts a specific narrative syntax, located somewhere between Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchill. Twisting his three arcane rural archetypes against their fears, dreams and the judgments of the village they all distrust, Harrower bends his adult fable into an enigmatic, unnerving, yet finally hopeful parable.

Director-designer Scott Barber's austere, atmospheric staging honors the oddly intriguing text, adjectives and metaphors colliding with erotic tension and violence. Barber's set, with its quilt-laden bed poised between a millstone and a stable wall, serves the esoteric tone, and lighting designer Dawn Hess, as usual, makes striking use of limited instruments.

As William, the plowman, Vince Campbell counters his contemporary quality with great skill; as Gilbert, the miller, Aurelio Locsin keeps a tight leash on his innate sardonic edge. These two company stalwarts frame the plowman's wife of Christine Tanabe, a mercurial discovery whose lyrical stillness blooms as her character's awareness does.

Their nuanced work sustains interest, despite a lack of menace to the hieratic effects. This especially applies to the unseen village, its oppression stated more than felt, and certain moments, like the final curtain, are overly pointed. Still, "Knives in Hens" is creditable stagecraft. Its adult aspects almost seem tasteful, surely a Rude Guerrilla first.

--David C. Nichols

"Knives in Hens," Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 11. Contains nudity and sexual situations. (714) 547-4688. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

When a play has horse-fucking as its central theme -- as in, a man fucking a
horse -- one would think that somebody might mention it in the countless,
glorious reviews that have been heaped on this award-winning piece of
theater. Alas, the accolades that have been trotted out for David
Harrower's 1995 debut never once mention that we, the unsuspecting audience,
will have to watch a man fucking a horse (albeit simulated); they call it
"poetry with strong adult content." But while horse-fucking might be poetic
to Harrower, for the rest of us, it's kind of hard to concentrate on things
such as plot and character development when your head's full of Mrs. Ed
taking it up the pullcart.
That said, if you just have to see an odd Renaissance love triangle (not
including the horse -- well, not really) about a woman (Christin Tanabe),
her beasty husband (Vince Campbell) and the town miller (Aurelio Locsin)
told through somewhat jarring prose, then Rude Guerrilla's beautifully
constructed production might stimulate your artistic juices. When we
managed to forget about the horsing around parts -- and stopped waiting for
bloody hens to appear -- we did appreciate the fine acting and the
interesting tale of a naive woman who has sex with the reviled miller so
he'll help her roll a grinding stone over her cheatin' man.
The taciturn lover's bond, though, is passionless and forged only in the
name of morality and freedom, with the pair going seperate ways after the
murderous deed. In fact, when the miller leaves town, the woman becomes the
miller (poetry!), basking in her new solitude and, no doubt, serene nights
void of snorts and whinnies. I wish we could forget so easily.
"Knives in Hens" at the Rude Guerrilla Theater Co. at the Empire Theater,
200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, (714) 547-4688. Fri-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30
p.m. Also Thurs., June 9, 8 p.m. Through June 11. $10-$18
-- Stacy Davies

Cooks spoil simple broth of 'Hens'

Review: David Harrower's play has a uncomplicated message, but it's obscured
by his approach and Rude Guerrilla's staging.

By ERIC MARCHESE
Special To The Register

With "Knives in Hens," Scottish playwright David Harrower has written a
simple tale about a plowman, his wife and a miller - perhaps too simple for
most theater companies to pull off with success, or for their audiences to
grasp.

Rude Guerrilla Theater Company's staging of the 1995 play at the Empire
Theater in Santa Ana shows just how thoroughly confusing "Knives" can be
when not properly cast and performed.

The framework of Harrower's play is, well ... simple: In an unspecified
rural community, a crude plowman named William has just wed a young woman as
much for her abilities as a field hand as anything. They're simple folk
whose lives consist of plowing and working the land, eating, sleeping and
having sex.

What becomes clear early on in Scott Barber's staging is that William, like
everyone else in his small village, despises the local miller, and he
intends to inculcate that same hatred in his ignorant new wife. At the same
time, William clearly prefers to keep his wife in the dark about certain
things.

The miller, whose name is Gilbert Horn, is relatively well-educated in
comparison with the villagers. That fact, Harrower slowly reveals, is the
true source of their loathing of him - something we learn only by watching
the effect his presence has upon William's young marriage.

In terms of allegory, "Knives in Hens" has the potential for genuine
potency, a tale that glorifies literacy and open-mindedness over ignorance
and superstition. Harrower, however, has crafted something too slow-moving
and too cryptic to engage your mind or grip your heart; compounding the
problem at Rude Guerrilla is Barber's miscasting of all three roles.

The plowman is a grimy primitive with primal needs, an animalistic nature
and the sort of cunning that would make him instinctively self-protective,
even while he's bullying his wife or facing off with the miller. As William,
though, Vince Campbell reads his lines as if weary and bored, not edgy and
dangerous.

Aurelio Locsin's Gilbert is just as uninspired, the actor equating flat line
readings with rustication. Worse still, Locsin's intelligence shines through
as slyness, a quality that seems to justify the villagers' suspicions of
him. Judging from the script, the miller is soft-spoken, scholarly and
philosophical – qualities Locsin fails to evoke.

As the Young Woman (unnamed in the script), Christine Tanabe struggles with
the scenes where Harrower wants us to see the character struggling to make
sense of her place in the universe. The combination of Harrower's dialogue
and Tanabe's limited acting range makes it appear that the Young Woman is
wrestling not with metaphysical concepts, but with the English language
itself.

Barber's set is pleasantly minimalist, and his sound design effectively uses
guitar music suggestive of rural England. Harrower's script, though, is
tricky. His characters - even the miller - are crude, a quality that most of
today's computer-using, cell-phone-toting thespians might find too
challenging to convincingly portray.