Recent Royal Court productions have charmed audiences with live goats ('The Goats'), or geese and rabbits ('The Ferryman'). 'Gundog' might be set in shepherding country, but Simon Longman's play is staged with none of the softening influences of ickle fluffy lambs.
Instead, a grotesque assemblage of wool and hard flesh stands in for a flock of sheep that give birth, die, or are slaughtered by Becky and Anna – two sisters who know there's nothing cute about shepherding. Vicky Featherstone's production is hard and slick, intercutting scenes with bursts of white noise and bleak blue light.
But despite this toughness, there's a deep melancholy to Longman's text. Migrant worker Guy (Alec Secareanu) comes to stay with the sisters, hiding from his own failures, only to discover that 'quiet' and 'peaceful' aren't the same thing. This remote landscape drives the sisters to furious hard work just to survive. And, it gradually emerges, it's also driven their brother to distraction, and its open fields are marked by the unravelling of their father and grandfather.
Ria Zmitrowicz plays Becky with a wonderfully child-like, stilted insistence: she escapes the bleakness around her by thinking of ice cream, or swimming pools filled with dolphins. She bounces off Rochenda Sandall, who makes a taciturn, resolute older sister, filled with a silent strength. Their struggles to survive have an unlikely humour that makes me think of Chekhov, muddied over with the realities of 21st century rural poverty.
'Gundog' is miserable, and nothing much happens. It tells you everything that's going to happen within the first few minutes, denying you the satisfaction of suspense. But its uncompromising approach feels totally appropriate for a story that's soaked in the fatalism of farming, in the sense that lives are defined by land, by seasons, by diseases you can't predict or control.
Longman's Royal Court debut is a powerful antidote to chirpy, 'The Archers'-style depictions of 21st century agriculture as a problem that can be solved with organic sausage roll enterprises or positive thinking. Becky and Anna know they're out of step with the times, and his play captures their slow disintegration as the world keeps turning.