Women’s power a burning issue

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/02/2010 (6054 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the opening scene of Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom, a couple have just had sex when the man pulling up his pants suddenly turns on the woman.

He notes contemptuously that since she is not a virgin, a wife or a widow, she must be a whore and since this takes places in 1640s England, will soon be accused of worse — being a witch.

In that patriarchal society, those were the only options for women, and anyone who didn’t fit in was conveniently demonized. With a spirited, thoughtful 100-minute presentation, this University of Winnipeg student production makes the point that some of that thinking still exists in 2010.

In her 1976 feminist drama, Churchill focuses on a handful of impoverished women like lusty Alice, her widowed, curse-happy mother Joan and Betty, who gets bled of her bad humour because she refuses to marry a man she doesn’t love. It was a time when, if a woman had a mind of her own, she was labelled a social outcast and must be a witch.

Joan and Ellen, a herbalist who gave a potion to a pregnant women to get rid of her baby, are found guilty of witchcraft by an officious nutcase named Packer, who prods his accused with pins until he hits a spot of skin that doesn’t bleed and must have been touched by the devil. Packer’s tormenting partner is Goodie, a woman who preys on her gender for the money.

Director Hope McIntyre, who also helmed ChurchillFest’s Fen, creates a truly chilling hanging scene. The sight of two women very realistically swinging at the end of a rope brings home the shocking injustice that sometimes passes for law.

The third-year acting class displays a lot of promise, led by Kelci Stephenson as Alice, desperate for a man to take her away to the big city. Adam Pridham oozes selfishness as loathsome farmer Jack and Reanna Korade convinces as his long-suffering, superstitious wife. Sarah Petty also stands out as bloodied Betty.

McIntyre also dresses up Vinegar Tom (the name of Joan’s cat) with contemporary significance to good effect. On entering the theatre, each patron is arbitrarily given a piece of coloured paper, which indicates one of three groups. As a prologue, the leaders speak on stage, rallying support for their colour and hate-mongering against the others. The exercise succeeds in showing how a group will extol its goodness by making others seem evil.

Churchill’s witch hunting is interspersed with modern songs — rally songs, really — performed effectively by the dozen cast members lead by one guitarist. One of the tunes asks the audience, "Who are the witches now?" The answer seems to be the burka-wearing Muslim women whose photographs are flashed on a screen at the rear of Kim Donald-Haverty’s rope-dominated set.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca