Review: The Farmer’s Wife at Theatre by the Lake

“…a beautiful, heart-rending tribute to all the unsung heroes who keep life alive…”

The Farmer’s Wife by Hannah Khalil, Theatre by the Lake

By Ken Powell

Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake (TBTL) continues with another production of an increasingly lengthy run of emotional rollercoasters with The Farmer’s Wife.

Based around Helen Rebanks’ bestselling book, Hannah Khalil has woven a tale set around a farm kitchen table, giving us a glimpse of life for three generations of women. There is a clear intention that, while this is set in rural Cumbria, this could be almost any farm in the country, with the characters simply titled Young, Older and Oldest. Their names are never said during the drama we see unfolding over a short 90 minutes.

In classic TBTL tradition, we have moments of hilarity (Gloria Gaynor will never be the same again for me) and times of reaching for the hankies – comforted that no one can hear you sniffing because it is drowned out by everyone else doing likewise. Just as with the superlative Calendar Girls from recent weeks, this play tears your heart apart and then heals it with hope and joy.

If you know anything about farming at all, you know that hope is not in abundance right now. Jeremy Clarkson has done wonders for beaming the difficulties of farming life into our living rooms with Clarkson’s Farm. The problems were going on long before then, though, but were largely neglected by society, who just took getting food for granted. I was advocating for farmers to be held in as high regard as doctors ten years ago in my TEDx talk (which, looking over it again, has turned out to be rather prescient in several ways). It is only now that we’re really waking up to the crisis that is going to face us all soon.

The Farmer’s Wife makes these issues personal and very specific to the characters’ lives. There are elements that any of us who have a family and a job can empathise with – the relentless demands of your job, the never-ending bills, the fear of not being able to keep going and losing it all. These are problems most of us are facing, whatever our careers. But there’s an added dimension to farming because without farmers we have no food, and many farms have been worked by the same families for many generations. It’s not like losing your job if you lose your farm. It’s more like your house burning down, taking every precious memory with it.

The three actors show us something of how farming has changed across three generations since the world wars. Roberta Kerr plays the Oldest, whose job was to grow, baby, grow for a country ravaged by long years of war until suddenly all the support was taken away. Kerr plays this matriarch convincingly and with great empathy. Christine Entwisle plays the Older, who took on the farm to repair the damage done to the soil and live with nature rather than against it. Entwisle is convincing as a woman who started keen but has been ground down by ever-changing challenges and government legislation. Eireann Devlin plays the Young, hopeful, full of ideas and ready to take on modern practices to make the farm a successful business again. Devlin bounces with enthusiasm, showing us just why farmers put up with the job: there is great joy in working outdoors with nature despite the backbreaking work and demoralising nature of the business side. Watching all three felt like watching genuine mothers and daughters. These weren’t actors; these were farmers’ wives. It was that real.

I won’t give away any spoilers other than to say the ending had us laughing through our freely-running tears. I’ve never known such a real display of community in the theatre as I saw after this show. It was clear that many from the farming community were there watching, and the buzz from everyone having a drink after the show was warm and loud. The Farmer’s Wife is ultimately about wives supporting husbands, mothers supporting daughters and daughters supporting mothers back in return. But it is also about the importance of community support, that we don’t do this life alone. The play is a testament to the many generations of farmers’ wives who have kept their community running so that farms can put food on our plates. It is a beautiful, heart-rending tribute to all the unsung heroes who keep life alive. Go see it – I defy you not to come away deeply moved and changed inside.

The Farmer’s Wife plays at Theatre by the Lake until Saturday 10 October. Tickets are available here.

Ken Powell is chief editor for Northern Arts Review and is also a bestselling author and writer for various publications around the world. A former school teacher, he continues to write educational books along with fiction and travelogues. You can find all his books and various websites here including his popular TEDx talk about the Global Village. He lives with his family in a wonderfully isolated village in West Cumbria where he enjoys drinking tea, chatting with the birds and winding up his dog. You can support his work (or just buy him a coffee) here.