Twenty-one-year-old Sally Poppy (a powerful yet broken Haley Wong) is convicted of murdering young Alice Wax and sentenced to hang in March of 1759 on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk, in England. Sally claims she is pregnant and if that is true, she cannot be hanged. To determine the truth of Sally’s claim, the Justice “calls for a jury of matrons to decide it.” Sally’s life hangs in the balance awaiting the decision of twelve matrons. This is the stuff of Lucy Kirkwood’s “The Welkin” currently running at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater purportedly written and staged to celebrate the strength and importance of women in the face of historical sexism and misogyny. Unfortunately, “The Welkin” never allows the women in the play the opportunity to “see” Halley’s Comet or the metaphorical importance of that comet which is central to Kirkwood’s text.

This is an important time for women in America and globally. The conservative United States Supreme Courts’s Dobb decision in 2022 upended the important precedent of Roe v. Wade. The conservative right-wing evangelical church that has strayed far from the sacred texts it purports to underpin its foundation has increased its sexist, misogynist, transphobic, and homophobic rhetoric pledging to continue its fight against women’s’ reproductive rights. And the far-right conservative House of Representatives remains determined to support the reelection of the former president who openly pledges to continue his fight to further erode the rights of women in America.

During this time, the theatre needs a strong play about strong women who cannot just survive but overcome the sexist, misogynist political milieu in the United States. Unfortunately, “The Welkin” is not that play. The twelve matrons of their own will and not that of their husbands, cannot display a united front to rescue Sally from hanging but rather make choices that place her death in the hands of the woman who birthed her.

Lucy Kirkwood’s text and Sarah Benson’s direction offer a convoluted, histrionic, and less-than-dense treatment of an important topic. Kirkwood’s script is overlong, overwrought, and more pretentious than it needs to be. The set design by dot is clumsy. The black drape does not work well in any scene and unfortunately lends an amateurish element to the setting. The opening three scenes (The Night in Question, The Execution Day, and The Empanelling) suffer from cramped playing areas and limited lighting opportunities. Here as in other places, director Sarah Benson needs to take responsibility: the open space behind the distracting draping is sufficient to stage the entire play using Stacey Derosier’s always appropriate and often haunting lighting.

The talented diverse cast of women seems unable to form an ensemble as they attempt to make sense of “The Welkin.” Neither the eleven matrons nor the twelfth the midwife Elizabeth Luke (a powerhouse and tour-de-force performance by Sandra Oh) can save “The Welkin.” If the producers and the creative team decided to a serious reworking of the play, many of the problems outlined in this review could be remedied; however, given the critical acclaim this current production has been given, such a reworking seems unlikely.