Rory Mullarkey & Michael Longhurst: Physical Theatre

After a journey into the wilds of Russia last year, playwright Rory Mullarkey visited a Moscow history museum, where a black and white photo caught his eye. It showed a dour couple standing outside a ramshackle house. The caption read: 'Cannibals, 1930.' The stark directness of this image became the inspiration for Mullarkey's first full-length play, which premieres at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre on 3 April.

Cannibals tells the story of Lizaveta, a woman whose simple farm life in an ex-Soviet state is ripped apart when soldiers murder her husband. Forced on a nightmarish journey through her war-torn homeland, Lizaveta travels across a dangerous, grisly continent – and eventually to Manchester. Thrust violently into the desperate consumerism of the 21st century, Lizaveta's familiar notions of love and family are shattered.

The play promises to be one of the most daring works the Royal Exchange has ever staged. “I pushed myself to be as bold as possible; hopefully people won't have seen anything like it before,” says former Manchester Grammar School student Mullarkey, who wrote Cannibals while he was Pearson Playwright in Residence at the theatre in 2011.

“I wanted to use my imagination as much as possible. It's set in a different country, the protagonist is a different gender to me, she's had a completely different life to me. I found that freeing: I wasn't a slave to my biography and circumstances. I could create something much more theatrical and interesting.”

The man charged with bringing the playwright's vision to life is director Michael Longhurst, who has previously worked with Mullarkey at London's Royal Court, and whose recent credits include directing Jake Gyllenhaal in his American stage debut (in Nick Payne's If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet).

"Scene after scene had impossible stage directions like, ‘he eats his arm, he eats his leg, he eats himself completely'" – Michael Longhurst

“Cannibals is full of incredibly striking images and ideas,” Longhurst says. “I've never picked up a script that was like, 'she drowned him in a river, she locked him in a car boot.' Scene after scene had impossible things – stage directions like, ‘he eats his arm, he eats his leg, he eats himself completely, he disappears.' It's not a world of naturalism, so I'm forced to find a language that is theatrical that somehow conveys feeling.”

This kind of imagery would be difficult to realise in any venue, but the Royal Exchange's round space has proved a real challenge. “The practical management of bodies in space – if he dies there, how's he going to get back there? – that's really heightened in the round,” Longhurst explains. “You can't have walls, you can't do jump cuts; it's always a journey into the round.” It's been Longhurst's job – in tandem with designer Chloe Lamford – to create rhythm and movement on stage. “It's exciting because it's forced us to be really bold. It'll be a real visual feast.”

Ony Uhiara stars as Lizaveta, alongside Simon Armstrong, Ricky Champ, Tricia Kelly and Laurence Spellman. “The play is a mythic parable in that a girl gets trafficked from one part of the world to another,” says Longhurst. “Ony really got the quality of Lizaveta – she was able to wipe out first-world experience and cynicism, and go back to a place of real naïvety so she could go on that journey.”

“By starting the play in the East and having most of it set so far away, it makes us question things we see as normal in this part of the world,” says Mullarkey. “If you come out of the theatre and look at Starbucks on St Ann's Square a bit differently, I'd feel the play had succeeded on some level.”

“It's a massive challenge to how we live and consume,” adds Longhurst. “Lizaveta goes from living on a farm to suddenly being drowned in 21st-century consumerism. Watching her vision be opened up is thrilling, and makes us aware of the absurdities of our lives compared to what might seem like absurdities in others.' Hopefully it will be a vital piece of theatre, it will be quite visceral.”