The Ungodly by Joanna Carrick. Southwark Playhouse, the Little. 77 Newington Causeway, London until 16 November 2024,

3☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“Powerful but overacted.”

It is 1641, Puritan England is a land where people believe in witches, where rumour becomes fact, where death comes easily to babies, to animals and the blame gets placed on people who have wished ill, have maybe been meeting socially, petting a cat – seen as familiars of those who are in touch with the devil – gossiping, which can be regarded as casting spells. It is much as social media today can spread things untrue that get taken as fact by people who read the messages and then spread the lie even farther. Joanna Carrick's play does pack a powerful punch but the first act takes too long to reveal that Matthew Hopkins, the bible quoting half brother of farmer's wife Susan is the Witchfinder General to be. It is in the second half when Susan, Matthew and her husband Richard interrogate Rebecca West, a young girl whose mother was suspected of being a witch and cleared that the piece starts to exert its grip. Rebecca has attended a gathering of old women which included her mother and in Hopkins' fevered imagination was a meeting of witches casting spells, and causing accidents and the death of people and animals in the local rural community of Manningtree in Essex – one being baby John.

As a director Joanna Carrick has allowed her cast to grandstand, to shout, when actually less volume would make what is happening all the more terrifying. The men, particularly the virginal, hysterical Matthew, shout endlessly at Susan who gradually starts to believe that baby John was bewitched because of the pressure they exerts. But he was her fourth baby to die and babies died easily then. When they turn to interrogating Rebecca, effectively manipulating her into saying what they want through the violence of their speech, it is just more sound and fury and the ending when the couple, Matthew having gone off to be the Witchfinder General of history, sit back and wonder whether they had been wrong after all seems implausible, more a dramatist's device than what could have happened. The play has been rapturously received in its previous outing and now here but maybe everyone has been doing it for too long. Somehow the message, which has to be that today people still can be manipulated on social media by influencers, our equivalent of the Witchfinder, gets drowned in the noise the performers make doing an awful of acting at the top of their voices. They are impressive but it is all overdone.

Cast

Nadia Jackson – Susan Edwards.

Christopher Ashman – Richard Edwards.

Vincent Moisy – Matthew Hopkins.

Rei Mordue – Rebecca West.

Creatives

Director – Joanna Cxarrick.

Design – Katy Latham.

Original Music – Matt Penson.

Lighting Design – David Newborn.