Maryland began as a rapid-response cri de coeur from the playwright Lucy Kirkwood after the murders of Bibaa Henry and her sister Nicole Smallman, Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa – as well as the ensuing revelations about endemic misogyny in the police. It was staged at the Royal Court in London in October 2021. Now, it has come to the small screen on BBC Two, slightly expanded from its original 20 minutes. Television moves more slowly than the theatre, but no production about violence against and the killing of women will be untimely. This adaptation comes shortly after the announcement that – partly as a result of the embedded vileness and viciousness revealed so starkly by the murders of the sisters and Everard – the Metropolitan police has been put into special measures.
The plot of Maryland is small, but strong enough to bear what Kirkwood hurls at it. Two women called Mary – “You’re gonna laugh!” says PC Moody (Daniel Mays) as he introduces them at the police station – have been attacked by the same man within a few hours of each other. The first (played by Hayley Squires, who starred in Adult Material, Kirkwood’s series about the pornography industry, created by an all-female team) is pugnacious, the second (Zawe Ashton) more cowed – but they hold themselves with the particular stillness that tells you they are shattered. Most women will recognise it. A quarter of us have held ourselves that way. The others have borne witness to a friend, a family member, a loved one, a colleague, a stranger or a client doing the same. Simple maths makes us all part of Maryland.
PC Moody’s mother was also a Mary, he tells us. An anxious woman, always “away to Maryland”, his dad would say – the briefest of descriptions opening up an entire life. Women are usually anxious for a reason, and a dismissive husband may be just one or, depending how deep his contempt goes, all of them.
This 25-minute piece makes every syllable count, never more so than when the furies (Zainab Hasan, Jennifer Joseph, Sarah Lam, Gabriella Leon and Sarah Woodward) arrive. These women appear in and between the Marys’ scenes. Sometimes they speak for them. “Mary’s finding it difficult to breathe … Mary thinks she’s screaming right now,” they intone as the narrative twist arrives – evoking all those pivotal moments when instincts are superseded by bone-deep fear.
More often they speak for us all, chanting a lyrical list of daily experiences, common constraints, lives lived with ceaseless vigilance in order to stay safe. “My father once gave me a rape alarm in my Christmas stocking, along with some chocolate, a scented candle and a walnut,” says one. “I have Googled how to knock out a taillight from inside the boot of a car.” “If I was attacked and left for dead, I know which doors on my street I’d drag my bloodied carcass to and knock on, and which ones I wouldn’t.” “If you don’t bruise like a Caucasian, you’re not believed like a Caucasian.” They are lines to make you flinch. Sometimes they are bitterly funny as well as painfully true. “If a handsome stranger sent me a drink in a crowded cocktail bar, I’d be too anxious about Rohypnol for it to threaten my marriage in any exciting way.”
Delivered wryly, wearily, they are a collage of female experience. The force of the unfairness gradually gathers – as do further furies, until they are marching down a suburban street like a miniature army – into rage. The final few minutes are devoted to clearing away the obfuscations made by those who prefer to live in denial, those who don’t even flinch. “Not all men,” says one. “No, not all men,” the rest of them chorus, before collectively asking whether, if they were offered a box in which two out of every 10 Maltesers was in fact “a small ball of human shit, would you feel a bit anxious while eating them or would you just crack on?”
The anger mounts. The word “rape” is never mentioned (apart from the alarm in the stocking), but instead replaced with a terrible noise, which works perfectly to encompass the array of brutalities the word covers, its ramifications and the enduring difficulty of articulating – to yourself, to others, to a courtroom, to a wilfully obtuse world – what it means.
Maryland is weeks, months, years, generations of pain and fury distilled into something truly powerful. I would like to see a recording or a script (available free on the Royal Court website until 27 November) pressed into the hands of every schoolgirl, to arm them for the struggle. And every schoolboy. Because not all men, but more men than you think.
