A trio of ladies wearing soccer kits enact a witch trial as an anarchic piece of gig theatre. It’s as unusual because it sounds, extravagantly unrefined and typically abstruse but it surely brings a garish, outlier, fairground power which feels important and thrilling in an area for showcasing new work.
The trial of 1604, excavated from the annals of half-documented historical past by co-creator, Lydia Higman, started with a soccer match.
Brian Gunter, the richest man within the village, killed two brothers on the match and bought away with their murders. When their mom, Elizabeth Gregory, wouldn’t let the deaths go quietly, he accused her of bewitching his daughter, Anne. An account of Anne Gunter’s life was unearthed within the Nineties and as a play based mostly on incomplete historic file, it comprises a plaintive, emphatic, uncertainty.
Co-created by Rachel Lemon who directs, and Julia Grogan, who alongside Higman alternately performs all of the elements together with Hannah Jarrett-Scott, it’s a story of homicide, male energy, native vendetta and household abuse which went from an Oxfordshire village to the court docket of King James I.
As a witch trial, it appears as if it would head into acquainted floor – a robust man smearing a much less highly effective girl – but it surely develops in stunning methods, with extra shock in its enactment.
First seen on the Edinburgh Competition final yr, it brings the perimeter’s messy, improvisational spirit, however that’s no unhealthy factor. As a devised piece, it looks as if totally different, extra harmful fare than the work not too long ago aired within the Upstairs area of the venue.
The music, composed by Higman, is intense and compelling whereas Anna Orton’s set is barely there: an empty white field by which to boost the previous with as a lot playfulness as potential (the actors’ white soccer package is shortly splattered with mud and blood).
The manufacturing loses its drive at occasions and appears longer than its 70 minutes, whereas some scenes lack definition. However the central idea works and higher to have a scrappy play than a neat one with not half as a lot journey and artistic virtuosity. I wait to see what this firm does subsequent.
