Howard Miller takes a look at The Welkin at Atlantic Theater Company:
British playwright Lucy Kirkwood has a propensity for writing big, bold works that draw from real-world events to tackle disturbing subjects in ways that make us consider the larger implications beyond the headlines. Her 2014 Olivier-winning drama Chimerica, for example, emerged from the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in China. And Broadway theatregoers may recall The Children, a 2017 Tony Award nominee that dealt with the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown like the one that occurred in Fukushima, Japan. Now there's The Welkin, opening tonight at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater, a courtroom drama that examines women's empowerment over life-and-death matters within a male-dominated system of codified justice. |