It’s the 19th century; the Scottish Borders. Women stand on boxes, waiting to be chosen at the hiring fair. Broad shoulders, short backs and strong legs are prime attributes. A bondager is a woman hired for a year to work on the land by a hind, who is himself a farm worker hired for a year by a maister, who in turn works land he rents from the landowner. This information comes to us, little by little, as the lives of six women unfold through an agricultural year: four bondagers, the wife of a hind and the wife of the maister (formerly herself a bondager).
Change is in the air. Sue Glover’s 1991 play is flecked with hints of political attitudes that will turn the women’s present into our past. It began, though, she says, as a “misty landscape, a misty idea: shadows in a field; the cycle of farm life and work”. The first production, in Edinburgh’s former, tiny Traverse theatre, with actors and audience so close they could reach out and touch one another, powerfully communicated the raw physicality of these labouring lives. Work was the keynote.
Lu Kemp’s fine new production, in the more distant setting of this lyric-style theatre, brings out another aspect of the play: the mystical quality present in the relationship between people and land. Earth covers the stage floor, stretching to limits lost in darkness. Against this unvarying background, Jamie Vartan’s design and Simon Wilkinson’s lighting conjure contrasts of seasons and spaces: open fields and cramped living quarters; harvest plenty and winter weariness.
The effect is poetical but, at times, almost too beautiful. It highlights a sentimental strand in the writing. Sometimes the story line strives too hard for dramatic effect. There’s story enough in the everyday lives of these characters, as strong performances demonstrate. In particular, Wendy Seager, as wise woman and mother, makes even silent stillness voluble.
