Theatre / arcola theatre
Review: The Witch of Walkern, Factory Theatre
Set in 1712 and based on the true story of herbalist and ‘cunning woman’ Jane Wenham – one of the last women in England to be tried as a witch – Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s play explores the claustrophobically tight-knit microcosm of a small village at a time when both religious belief and rural superstition were powerful forces in peoples’ minds and daily lives.
The play refers back to a time, a generation before, when witch-hunts were at their peak in England – so that Jane’s accusation is seen by some as an unwelcome regression to the dark old days, and by others as a renewed chance to “cure the rot” by purging evil from their midst for good. These two opposing views are championed respectively by benevolent, forward-thinking Bishop Hutchinson and the fervent, sexually repressed young pastor Samuel Crane.
In the first part, the narrative and opposing moral positions are clearly laid out but also in danger of falling into archetypes – although they do chart a pre-Enlightenment time when morality and thinking were largely black and white. With BOV’s concurrent staging of The Crucible, a glance back at ‘witch-hunts’ both modern and historical seems to be part of the zeitgeist. At the heart of both plays is civilised society’s base tendency to demonise ‘the other’ – whether that be the poor, outsiders, immigrants, people with different religious or political beliefs or, in this case, lone women who don’t conform to the norm.
As a production, the (already realistic) play was encumbered by overly literal costumes, props and set – particularly the hideous back wall full of cupboards. Hints of period costumes and less obvious and tedious moving of bulky furniture in blackouts would have made it feel more contemporary and immediate.
Award-winning playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz focuses on the lack of self-determination available to her female characters and the precarious nature of their lives and social standing: the harmless old wise woman (aka ‘witch’) concocting herbal salves and delivering babies for the very people who may suddenly turn on her; the black slave girl (beautifully played by Cat Simmons) who long endures the affections of her master, suppressing her longing for freedom and autonomy; the young girl who loses her mother and falls prey to sexual exploitation by men; and the tart-with-a-heart barmaid (a heartfelt role by Rachel Sanders) whose free-loving nature also evokes her own self-deprecating Christian guilt.
As with her earlier plays Her Naked Skin and Shoreditch Madonna, Lenkiewicz’s female characters are viewed through a feminist lens as they negotiate a route through the confines of the prevailing patriarchy – an old story, but one that makes this play bang up to date.
Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern continues at the Factory Theatre until Saturday, November 7. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/detail/jane_wenham_the_witch_of_walkern
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