Theatre review: The Ungodly

Transferring to Southwark Playhouse's Little from Ipswich, Joanna Carrick's The Ungodly starts during the Civil War, continuing through England's years of Puritanical rule, and essentially serves as a villain origin story for The Witchfinder General. But unlike most stories about witch-hunts, whether literal or metaphorical, it spends very little of its time on people who use the persecution of others to further their own agendas: For the most part these characters are true believers. At the centre of the story is Nadia Jackson as Susan, and her relationship with Richard (Christopher Ashman,) who we first meet proposing to her at an inopportune time - she's just buried the child her late sister had asked her to raise. The pair will eventually marry, but their generally happy relationship will be clouded by them losing four children of their own.

Meanwhile Susan's father has remarried, and she has a new step-brother in Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Moisy.) We first meet him as an awkward, stuttering teenager, but at some point a lecture from a visiting Puritan preacher gives him a religious zeal against the demonic forces apparently causing all the village's problems, and a new purpose in life.

As the witch-hunts predominantly targeted women it's easy to see Hopkins as a 17th-century incel, radicalised against a small circle of confident, comparatively independent women, and finding his own confidence in an aggressive, destructive, humourless way (he refuses to accept that there's anything funny about a demonic familiar named Colin.) Susan and Richard on the other hand are a quietly devout but pragmatic couple, sometimes feeling a bit too modern in their attitudes, but the focus on their relationship and losses effectively brings the audience to sympathise with them. Their own conversion to hatred for the accused women comes as a desperate attempt to make sense of losing four babies.

This conversion does end up being one of the clunkier elements of the play, particularly the way they both flip so dramatically at the same time. The focus on their relationship also means that some of the external context has to be dropped in quite abruptly, like the late revelation of why the other villagers might have an actual grievance against the couple (it turns out over the course of the play Richard has inherited a lot of land, but has neglected to make donations to their poorer neighbours as would be expected of the richest villager.)

Carrick also directs a production with a lot of individual strong elements: Matthew's eventual understanding of how the situation translates into personal power for himself comes as he interrogates Rei Mordue's accused girl, forcing her to give up her mother; Susan's persecution of her neighbours fails to give her the hoped-for closure, leaving her ever-more bloodthirsty and looking for scapegoats, and let's not get started on modern parallels for that one; the general Puritanical atmosphere of joylessness, emphasis on suffering and hatred of popery* provides a context for why people turned on each other to find an outlet for their misfortune without contradicting the prevailing religious teaching. But the energy is just a little bit underwhelming, and Matt Penson's tinkly piano score is a bit too gentle to create the tension you would hope for, so the whole never quite satisfies the promise of individual elements.

The Ungodly by Joanna Carrick is booking until the 16th of November at Southwark Playhouse's Little Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Bernie Totten.

*although I think you'll find it's pronounced potpourri, and I don't know why you're so angry about it