A new musical at the Kiln that seems to have had a lot of hype before it even opened - selling out some performances and already extending - Rebecca Brewer (book, music and lyrics) and Daisy Chute's (music and lyrics)
Coven plays like a darker version of
SIX, but without quite hitting that show's energy and conciseness. Based on the Pendle Witch Trials, it sees Jenet Device (Gabrielle Brooks) arrested on a charge of witchcraft that nobody's particularly bothered to explain to her, and thrown into a cell full of women who prove nobody is safe from accusation: Maggie (Jacinta Whyte) is a "cunning woman" whose knowledge of herbal medicine can easily be twisted against her as evidence of potion-making, and Nell (Allyson Ava-Brown) a midwife whose inability to save every single baby has left her with enemies in the village. But Frances (Shiloh Coke) is the powerful wife of a local landowner; unpopular for seizing common land, but unsuspecting that it could come to this.
