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Stage review Gripping tale of women's persecution
The Guardian
|March 11, 2025
The past sings to the present in Tallulah Brown's new play with music, exploring the persecution of women during Suffolk's 17th-century witch trials.
But Brown wisely leaves us to draw our own parallels, bucking a trend for overly didactic historical drama that lurches into the modern day. The story remains rooted in the local landscape as she bears witness to how fractured societies seek scapegoats and subordinates, under the influence of a small man longing for supremacy.
Such is its portrayal of Matthew Hopkins (Emily Hindle), the self-styled witchfinder general - "like he's a soldier, except he's not" observes Anne Alderman (Claire Storey).
Anne tends to the townspeople like she does her garden, and Brown supplies a virtual index of medicinal herbs - a reminder of the lost knowledge of female healers targeted as witches.
This story is from the March 11, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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