It’s unscientific and unverifiable, but I have a theory that a lot of shabby British playwriting is smoothed over by dazzling British acting. No, I’m not pushing the snobby lie that English actors are just, y’know, better. Their training does generally make them text-forward and apt for verbally dense, rhetorically twisty material. Take Peter Morgan’s Patriots, now on Broadway starring a hard-working Michael Stuhlbarg. I saw it last summer in London, where the magnificent Tom Hollander chewed the scenery with ravenous aplomb. Too bad that said verbal scenery was provided by the schematic and trope-drunk hack behind The Crown.
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This preamble is not to imply that Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin is shabby. She’s a courageous writer digging into pre-modern feminism and the moral rot of misogyny in visceral, startling ways. And I’m in no way suggesting the mostly American cast of the New York premiere is inferior; they’re a head-turning group of sixteen pros. There’s simply a lag between the very specific English setting (1759, East Anglia) and the non-accented vocal approach that director Sarah Benson has—no doubt carefully—taken. Except for an Australian twang here (Nadia Malouf) and a Scots brogue there (original UK cast member Tilly Botsford), the actors speak sans affectation regardless of class. (Exception: Mary McCann plays a posh dame with a hidden past.) There is an admirable goal of........