A brand new play channels the mystical energy of the Nine Ladies, Derbyshire's stone circle. But what can ancient monuments and the spinning cosmos say about relationships down here on earth...
Jonathon Pryke
When you look at someone you love, what do you see? How much of what you take in is the reality of that person? What do we each miss because of those things we are too scared to say or don’t want to hear? In Charlotte East’s striking writing debut she also plays one of two characters who come into one another’s orbit as kids, later lovers, then adults aware just how wrong things can get.
Charlotte’s character Kristen and Phil (played by Calum Lill) are people we can probably identify with from various stages of our own lives. They’ve grown up in an East Midlands town which seems to be Chesterfield if we’re going to be literal…only – and thankfully - that’s not how this play goes. The two are situated in a landscape where ancient people were moved by what they saw in the night sky, felt within and around, and marked that power with an arrangement of jutting stones and geometry known as Nine Ladies.
Above the characters, above us all, the planets kaleidoscope in and out of patterns, every now and then aligning in ways where their interactions are echoed in the lives of Kristen and Phil. Well, that’s what Phil reckons. Both are haunted more tangibly by patterns of tragically mundane violence that makes life together seemingly unattainable.
suffocated by memories like clouds of ammonia
For Phil, he is Saturn and Kristen is Jupiter. Perhaps in truth, each has aspects of both. Phil senses bleak magic in landscape he is rooted in. Kristen feels the pull of a more abundant life. Both are troubled by blind spots big as Saturn’s red eye, suffocated by memories like clouds of ammonia that Jupiter is built to handle. Celestial dignity and splendour are difficult for our duo, scarred by traumas one way or another shared by so many of us.
All that epic stuff is rooted in the relatable. Not knowing what to say but needing to say something and messing it up. Wanting things to be different but unsure what it might be or how to find it. And doing any of it sensing that you’re damaged, knowing you could get beyond all that if you just had world enough and time.
The King Stone plays at the Nottingham Playhouse from Thursday 26 February to Saturday 28 February 2026.
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