A DARKNESS FROM THE PAST, WITH MODERN ECHOES
Fittingly in ou age of outing, condemnation and cancellation there have within a twelvemonth been three plays about the 17c Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins: The Ungodly, A Tryal of Witches, and now this very classy adaptation by Ava Pickett of AK Blakemore’s book, The Manningtree Witches. The latter two focus, as is normal and obvious now, on the appalling misogyny which picked on any woman who was single, eccentric, elderly, socially rebellious, sharp-tongued and/or learned in female talents like midwifery and herbalism. The women legally-murdered as witches areshown as courageous victims, the men dominant brutal bigots. Especially Hopkins: in his brief terrible heyday he managed with legal help and the Biblical line “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” to bring more “witches” to the gallows than had been condemned in the preceding 15 years.
It is good that writers are exploring what it was all about, the best of them trying to step back into that Cromwellian post-Reformation world of harsh, uncelebratory religiosity. The first of the plays was Joanna Carrick’s remarkable THE UNGODLY (https://theatrecat.com/2023/10/27/the-ungodly-red-rose-chain-ipswich/) which toured to London and New York. That was a small, domestic chamber piece set in a farmhouse where Hopkins is the shy, nervy, sexually anxious brother-in-law of a couple who repeatedly lose infants (not uncommon: it was a hardscrabble world in rural Essex). They become followers, then feel a dawning doubt of sanity. Carrick offers us young Hopkins’ development, even some explanation, which makes it horribly easy to think about modern bigotries in twisted angry young men (he died at 27). Today he’d either be an Islamist “martyr” , go about shouting “Punch a Terf!”, or be deep in the Andrew Tate Manosphere.
The second witch-hunt play I mentioned, Tryal of Witches, was less successful but musically interesting. This one, however, is a skilfully written straight play with a big ensemble: we meet Hopkins first as a black-clad, striding figure arriving in the village, charismatic enough to dominate the local pastor and the scarce local men (the civil war is raging, there are many widows). It is framed by narration from Rebecca West (a real historic character, played with shrill sparkiness by Lucy Mangan) . It was she who, imprisoned and in fear of her own life, gave made-up evidence about a coven including her tough mother Anne: she confronts the audience from the start with a scornful “What would you have f-ing done?”.
It’s a good question. When a madness of belief grips those with power and hyou add an undercurrent of puritanical sexual anger, resistance by the weaker sex is futile. As Sam Mitchell’s stern, looming Hopkins says, “Satan dwells in dark moist places of the woods”: it’s not hard to spot the male accusers’ anxious Freudian parallel with the dark moist places of women, when the accusers lay out helpless starving old Bess to examine her for a Satan’s mark (any mole will do).
The strength of the piece is in the ensemble: we are taken into the midst of a lively, sweary, gossipy group of women. Scott Graham of Frantic Assembly is movement-director and keeps them y surging round the stage like shoaling fish in a lively expression of community alliances, jokes and quarrels. Gina Isaac is wonderful as Anne, seen-it-all scornful and tough on her dreamy daughter, yet kind towards Fiona Branson’s old Bess when she begs food. One inter-family quarrel over a boy’s wasting bacon fishing for crabs (a lovely Essex rural touch) gives a foothold to Hopkins when the child dies. So does a furious “pox upon you!” from old Bess, hungry and begging food. Shout witchcraft, blame the noisy women, though heaven knows though deaths were common in 1743 : as Anne says “hard lives in hard times. All we are is poor!”. As to the law, more than once Rebecca observes that truth seems not to count, all that matters is “what’s written down”. Confessions, depositions, comfortable lies.
Matthew Hopkins is also, in this telling, particularly and personally obsessed with young Rebecca, which enables the play to be given an unhistoric brief coda after the hangings. Unexpected, but something I found surprisingly satisfying. Overall it is a gripping show, well worth catching and fit for an afterlife, its gruesomeness shot with humanity and pity. And, from the past, a reminder of how quickly horrors can surge back after seeming to fade . And how in some still extant cultures years later – need I even mention Afghanistan or Iran? – it is true, as Anne bitterly tells her daughter , that “a woman’s skin is but a paper for a man to write on”.
mercurytheatre.co.uk to 14 march
rating 4
theatreCat 