In Bellringers, Daisy Hall draws on an old folk tradition that the ringing of bells can dissipate a thunderstorm. The play, which was a finalist for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Playwriting, is set at the bottom of the tower of a church in a village on the Oxford side of the Cotswolds where two men have reached their turn on the rota to be ready to ring as a storm approaches.
The script says it could be any time between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, but when Aspinall and his friend Clement shed their cassocks after coming in soaked by the driving rain, they have modern clothes beneath, and Clement pulls out a soggy cigarette and attempts to light it.
Theirs is a world of extremes and portents. It isn’t just raining metaphorical cats and dogs but fishes, real ones. A woman is said to have given birth to a cat and 14 rabbits, lambs are born with multiple heads, a toad seen in mourning by a gravestone and 34 others riding lily-pad boats down the Evenlode towards Moreton-in-Marsh and mushrooms are proliferating exponentially, even through the flagstone floor beneath their feet.
As the storm gets nearer, the friends calculate how far away it is, which village it is over. You find yourself also counting the seconds between lightning flash and thunder: you seem with them as it gets nearer. Will their ringing work or will the lightning make them its target? Some of their friends have already been frazzled and their bell ropes are dangerously sopping wet.
Paul Adeyela’s more naïve Aspinall and Luke Rollason’s Clement make a believable pairing. They may look young but they have been friends for a long time and their memories go back decades. They are frightened. Clement is more able to hide it, though the prospect of frazzlement sees him declaring how strongly he feels about Aspinall. He may be a non-believer, but he concocts a prayer that is honest and touching.
There is a Godot-like feeling of filling time before something happens in the pair’s conversation as it ranges over the present situation, their past and plans for the future (if they have one) reflecting human experience. But what may at first seem inconsequential with its strange facts and theories does have contemporary relevance as an apocalyptic warning that is all too topical as the Met Office measures even heavier rainfall and news bulletins report floods and landslips around the globe.
Jessica Lazar’s production and Natalie Johnson’s simple setting frame two fine performances, while David Doyle and Holly Khan’s lighting and sound design draw in the audience. Its 80-minute single act is actually very concentrated, though I am baffled as to why cassocks are removed and then reworn so often.