REHEARSALS: will start on Monday 23rd February 2026 (Every Monday and Thursday 7:30pm)

Please contact Peter Daly-Dickson should you have any questions about the production or to register your interest:

hello@saintsdramacoventry.org

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THE PLAY

The year is 1759. A child has been murdered. The accused, 21-year-old Sally Poppy, must convince twelve matrons that she is pregnant to spare herself from the gallows.

But these women - midwives, shopkeepers, servants, a colonel’s widow - have their own secrets, their own grief, their own rage at the world that uses them and ignores them in equal measure.

Locked in a room together, they must decide: Will they save Sally? Can they trust her? And what power do they really hold when the verdict is already written by men?

Written by Lucy Kirkwood, 'The Welkin' premiered at the National Theatre in 2020 to critical acclaim and is theatre that crackles with dark wit and raw humanity - a 'beautiful, weird, horror' story about women judging women, about mercy and motherhood, housework and murder, and what happens when the powerless are suddenly given the power of life and death.

'The Welkin' is an ensemble piece with 13 remarkable female roles ranging from young to elderly, each one a fully-realised human being with her own voice, her own story, her own truth to tell.

If you’ve ever wanted a role that doesn’t ask you to be the girlfriend, the mother, or the murder victim- but instead asks you to be complicated, contradictory, funny, furious, and utterly real- this is YOUR play.

REVIEWS:

“A superb new history play—a feminist courtroom drama that’s equal parts Twelve Angry Men, The Crucible and The Vagina Monologues, plus a dash of searing, up-to-the-minute political and social commentary… a warm, humane and very funny piece, firmly anchored in women’s everyday experience.”
Broadway World

“Brilliant, brave, bold and intelligent theatre. It is, for all the seriousness of its subject, often very funny yet at the close, profoundly moving.”
WhatsOnStage

“A mighty play: magnificent in its scope, depth and intricacy… a wise, funny, richly intelligent and generously ambitious play that asks, as all good history plays do, how far have we really come?”
Financial Times

“Dazzles with its examination of the big, immovable structures that inflict violence on women… there is so much richness in its visual imagination.”
The Guardian

“Ungoverned, furious, larky, layered… sheer, gutsy audacity.”
Evening Standard

“This audacious play’s strength lies in the richly textured picture it paints of these women and their lives, their relationship to their bodies and each other.”
The Stage​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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THE CHARACTERS TO BE CAST:

THE ACCUSED

SALLY POPPY, the murderer, twenty-one years old or thereabouts

THE JURY OF 12 MATRONS - All actors cast for the jury of matrons must look old enough to have had experience of childbirth

ELIZABETH (LIZZY) LUKE, the midwife, thirty-five years old, give or take

And

JUDITH BREWER, older

CHARLOTTE CARY, older

KITTY GIVENS, young, Scottish accent

HELEN LUDLOW, middle-aged

SARAH HOLLIS, middle-aged, older than Lizzy

EMMA JENKINS, middle-aged

ANN LAVENDER, young

MARY MIDDLETON, young, will be made to look pregnant

HANNAH RUSTED, young

SARAH SMITH, older

PEG CARTER, young, will be made to look pregnant

And Also

MR COOMBES, the bailiff

FREDERICK POPPY, the husband
MR WILLIS, the doctor

(These two roles possibly played by the same actor)

KATY LUKE, the midwife’s daughter
ALICE WAX, the child victim

(Possibly played by the same actor)

LADY WAX, the mother of the victim