Theatre review: Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkern

You don't see a lot of theatre about witch-hunts - presumably because Arthur Miller's The Crucible is so widely regarded (if not necessarily by me) as a masterpiece, that anything else would be held up to comparison. It's not put off Rebecca Lenkiewicz though, as she not only revisits the paranoia in Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkern, she also finds a new and bitingly topical metaphor in the theme: Society's poor, old and disabled being demonised, scapegoated and ultimately disposed of. The village of Walkern in Generic Rural Accentshire saw its share of witch trials and executions in the 17th century, and decades later, when everyone thinks things are calming down, they flare up again. As the play opens a woman has just been hanged as a witch, leaving behind a distressed and sexually confused daughter, Ann (Hannah Hutch.)

Theatre review: The Only True History of Lizzie Finn

Sebastian Barry's The Only True History of Lizzie Finn, set in the late Victorian era, introduces us to Lizzie (Shereen Martin,) an Irish can-can dancer in Weston-super-Mare. When she falls for troubled Boer War veteran Robert Gibson (Justin Avoth) her marriage takes her back to the home country she'd hoped not to return to. The daughter of a pair of travelling entertainers, her new life as mistress of a grand house is a big change however: She may appear to have risen in the world, but the Gibsons no longer own as much land as they once did, and the close-knit community don't take well to a lady of the manor with a past like Lizzie's, and the family are snubbed. Blanche McIntyre's production at Southwark Playhouse is played out on a multi-level set surrounded by tea-lights and with a channel of water running along the front of the stage, a fire-and-water theme running throughout the play.