Rowan and Percy are peasants, their clothes homespun, his legs bound with cloth that looks like hessian or sack cloth.  Percy talks about his team as if he is a 21st century fan throw back to the 16th century.  Rowan reports that their best player was seen carousing at The Cock Inn the night before the match which winds up Percy.   The set is grass covered mounds and piles of beech leaves.  

Then there is the arrival of a stranger, the mysterious Samuel (Soroosh Lavasani) dressed in velvets and full breeches like an aristocrat.  For Percy, Samuel is an interloper probably from Catton.  Samuel admits to being the son of a squire.  Rowan talks about omens and her visions of the future. 

A boy Robert (Wilbur Conabeare or Harry Weston) is beating the bounds but on seemingly the wrong date.  This development will have earth shattering meaning for Percy in terms of his identity.  Finally there are forward visions of the future of warfare and chaos.

Interestingly far away from Northumberland at Whitsun 1553 in the Strand London, John Dudley Duke of Northumberland is marrying his son Lord Guildford Dudley to Lady Jane Grey, the Protestant heir to the Crown.  Meeting Samuel is as close as Percy and Rowan will be to the ensuing conflict on the death of the king.  Although John Dudley will be executed his son Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester will rise to be a favourite of Elizabeth I.  Can it be a coincidence that the Percy family become  the Dukes of Northumberland?  

There were times when I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening in Stewart Pringle’s play but I found it engaging, involving with plenty of strong one liners.