by an nameless visitor critic
This present is the very fashionable telling of a witch trial that you just’ve probably by no means heard of. In 1605, in a small city in Oxfordshire after an altercation at a soccer match, Brian Gunter tries to get his neighbour Elizabeth Gregory hung as a witch, blaming his daughter Annie’s mysterious sickness on her. Without desirous to spoil the story, it doesn’t fairly work out as he deliberate.
The play is launched by “a historian! – not an actor playing a historian”. The historian then picks up the guitar to soundtrack the remainder of this rollicking, chaotic storytelling present. It is considerably far and wide; that is throw-everything-at-the-wall theatre. The solid of gifted performers give us large power as they sing, rap, dance and magic trick their means by means of this offbeat and anarchic present. There are bodily theatre dance breaks involving witches, familiars, and a squeezy bottle of honey. Not the whole lot works. The quantity of shouting concerned is kind of irritating, and the present is moderately one-note for one thing that has so many components inside it.
There are positively positives, nonetheless. it’s an attention-grabbing dissection of one other historic occasion wherein girls have little or no company. The story is instructed by means of courtroom information, wherein their lives are judged and recorded for posterity by males. The all-female firm are eager to level out the load of the patriarchy sitting behind and supporting Brian Gunter’s claims, even bringing in King James the First for a hilarious cameo to judge the trial.
Overall, this can be a fast-paced and entertaining present that brings a artistic and hilariously anachronistic fashion to the telling of a misplaced historic drama.
Gunter runs by means of 27 August.
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