WITCH: Morris: Croydon Warehouse, till 18 November
Croydon
WITCH: Ade Morris (who also directs)
Watermill (West Berkshire Playhouse) production on tour
Runs: 1h 45m, one interval: till 18th November
Review: Vera Lustig: Croydon Warehouse (020 8680 4060) 7November 2001
Ambitious, resourcefully staged but uninvolving and occasionally confusing series of vignettes charting a woman's search for redemption through self-knowledge
Unlike Arthur Miller, who wrote THE CRUCIBLE in response to a contemporary event – the McCarthy witch-hunts – Ade Morris was inspired to write WITCH by reading a history of witchcraft. He has obviously done his homework, and is eager to share his anorakish enthusiasm, his discoveries about the dark workings of the mind. Sadly, WITCH remains stuck in the past, like those Brain of Britain contestants with their encyclopaedic knowledge of Arthurian legend, who think a burka is some kind of musical instrument.
Morris is well served, though, by his company of three, who make a fair fist of the poetico-mystical language he uses in this gallop through herstory. They work wonders on a tiny stage, executing swift costume and character changes and rearranging the spartan furniture to create a gallows, a four poster bed, a courtroom. Some scenes, unfortunately, resemble tableaux in a chamber of horrors.
There's excellent support from foxy Toni Midlane, in an assortment of cameos (injecting sorely-needed humour). Matinee idol John Sackville plays a succession of cads who ill-treat the heroine, Susan: she is hanged, delivers a baby which the father promptly murders, believing it to be bewitched (a powerful scene, this), spurns her syphilitic husband, then shoots him when he tries to rape her, and so to bedlam.
Clara Onyemere, lithe and sympathetic, brings great passion but little variation to her multiple roles, resorting to that sobby tremolo used by actors when constricted by text and/or direction; poor Susan lurches from crisis to crisis with no chance of reflection or growth.
When I imagine the text of WITCH, I see a musty tome with frayed pages and archaic script. I rather think Ade Morris would be flattered.
Cast:
Toni Midlane
Clara Onyemere
John Sackville
Director: Ade Morris
Design: Libby Watson
Lighting: Lawrence T Doyle
2001-11-09 08:36:54