Performed in the town’s streets and squares, Mold Riots, written by Bethan Marlow and directed by Katie Posner, is a promenade performance that restages the riots that took place there in June 1869. Four people were killed when the military opened fire on a crowd protesting at the sentencing of two miners, jailed for allegedly attacking the manager of a local colliery after workers’ wages were cut.
Acted and sung with commitment and aplomb by a community cast of more than 100 (with a particularly game lineup of children), a choir, a brass band and four guest actors – Gethin Alderman, Lauren Fitzpatrick, Amy Forrest and Kai Owen – it’s an impressive feat, technically and theatrically.
Whether in nuanced scenes of drama, or as parts of arresting physical sequences directed by Natasha Harrison, or even simply herding the audience from one location to the next, the community cast was completely present and vital throughout. The evening’s greatest strength was a clear sense of collective ownership that the performers have of the work – both the story and its telling.
With the dialogue shifting fluidly between English and untranslated Welsh, tensions between communities and classes were effectively threaded throughout. It all ended a little too neatly with an earnest call for peaceful coexistence, but this was a persuasive act of recognition, allowing us, if only temporarily, to occupy the streets and stand in places where usually we cannot, to hear the stories that would otherwise have been unheard.
