The Witchfinder’s Sister - Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, 21 October 7:30pm

This is a very hodgepodge recollection of the recent theatre adaptation of Beth Underdown’s 2017 novel, which I saw on October 21 in Hornchurch. Any errors below are entirely the fault of my own recollections – it was a good but at times emotionally harrowing play! I'm currently trying to get hold of the script, so will update this if I do get it and can correct any of my mistakes. I wrote most of this directly after the show, around midnight... probably not the best idea, but I wanted to get it all down fresh.

My own research focuses on Rebecca West, so it’s been very interesting to me to see her brought to life this way, both in the play and the book it was based on. I feel very lucky that it premiered in my local theatre – and was actually produced by someone I went to school with. Essex is a very small world, sometimes.

Anyway, here's a quick overview for anyone not familiar with the plot:

The story is simplified from that of the novel to focus on just six characters: Matthew Hopkins, his sister Alice, his servants Grace and Mary, Alice’s mother-in-law Bridget, and Rebecca West.

The story begins with a flash forward to the final scene, with Alice in her shift. Trapped in her room in her brother's inn, she frantically recites the Lord’s Prayer over a steaming grate, desperately repeating the line "deliver us from evil". We then see each of the six characters moving around in the darkness. Alice meets one woman, then this woman meets another, and each new character is illuminated by a lamp as they step into the middle – it's all very reminiscent of the 'secret meetings' that the women were actually accused of. This staging also seems like it might tie into a recurring statement made in the play: “the worst thing you can meet in the dark is another person”.

We then begin the story with the arrival of Matthew Hopkin’s fictional sister, Alice, who arrives at the inn, the Mistley Thorn, pregnant and freshly widowed by a husband Matthew never approved of. She and her husband Joseph lived in London and struggled for money, so she took on work that was beneath her station as a laundress. She meets Matthew’s young servant Grace – naive, kind, and a bit of a gossip (and a standout character from an acting perspective), as well as Mary Philips, his loyal and mean housekeeper, who mistakes her for a servant due to her clothes.

Matthew is away, so Alice visits her mother in law, Bridget. She gives Bridget the news that Joseph is dead – killed while testing a gun he was making (he was a blacksmith – the need for guns in this time is explicitly linked by Alice to the Civil War context). Bridget weeps for a very brief time, then moves onto the stuff that actually furthers the plot quite sharpish. She tells Alice about the ongoing troubles in Manningtree – namely that Matthew has made 'friends in high places', and that old Bess Clarke has been accused of witchcraft. Bridget is poor, and has recently moved to a cheaper house because Harbottle Grimston has raised the rent.

Alice goes back to the Thorn, where Matthew has returned. We discover from their conversation (as his makeup isn't particularly drastic) that Matthew is badly disfigured in the face, body, and arms as a result of falling into a fire as a baby. We also learn that Alice and Matthew’s mother, a close friend of Bridget’s, died recently. Alice learns that Matthew has begun to question the story of him falling into the fire at his wet nurse’s home, and now thinks that it may have been Bridget’s fault. It is revealed that his mother left Bridget her Bible and ring, despite having promises these to Alice, and has only given Alice her old clothes (none of which will fit). Alice tells Matthew she has been widowed, but not that she is pregnant, and lies about the work she did to get by in London (claiming to be a midwife, rather than doing laundry). Matthew allows her to stay at the Thorn as long as she needs.

Without too much explanation other than a sense of injustice, Alice begins to try to uncover what Matthew is doing, believing Bess Clarke and the others to be innocent. She tries to reason with Matthew, but he puts her in her place. His servant Mary, is particularly short with Alice, and suspicious. She watches Alice when she once more visits Bridget – against Matthew’s wishes. Alice learns from Bridget that Alice and Rebecca West have now been accused. Bridget is fond of Rebecca, and asks Alice to try to change Matthew’s mind. She also confesses that Matthew’s mother is the one that dropped him in the fire. When Alice tries to hint at this to Matthew later, he is enraged, realising that she has visited Bridget once more. Bridget, he suggests, is too close to the accused, and Alice should therefore steer clear.

One night, Matthew returns from Bess Clarke’s house and pounds hysterically on the door, believing she has sent an imp to follow him home. Alice helps him change out of his shirt, which is damp from sweat, and we see burn marks on his arm and body. She tries to make him think logically – he will not.

Alice and Matthew’s relationship sours as she continues to press him to tell her what he is doing. Grace tells Alice about a poppet made of hair that she saw in Alice’s mother’s bed before he died, and confesses that she told Matthew about it. As Bridget visited their mother before she died, it seems that she might have taken it. The act ends with Rebecca sneaking into Matthew’s room and finding his book of names, which also contains diary entries by his father.

In the second act, Alice and Matthew’s relationship continues to deteriorate. Alice notes that the women Matthew lists are treated as less than human, with very short descriptive notes and sometimes even without names. Matthew leaves to investigate further from home, taking a reluctant Grace with him. He leaves Alice to watch over Rebecca West, who he wants to keep at the Thorn until she testifies at her trial. Alice resents Rebecca, and avoids her, believing her to have once had designs on her late husband. While Matthew and Grace are shown at the back of the stage questioning hooded women, Alice wanders the house trying to avoid Rebecca.

Rebecca and Alice eventually meet at the dinner table, where Rebecca tells the story of her life – when her mother was accused of witchcraft when she was younger, Bridget took her in, and she became friends with Joseph (Alice’s husband) – just friends. Without her mother to rely on, she turned to sex work to make money, and Thomas Hart was a regular client, hence the animosity between her and Prudence Hart. She confesses that she has a three year old son by Hart, who is kept from her, and who she imagines in the audience at her trial. Alice warms to Rebecca a little, and then begins to miscarry in a drawn out scene, with Rebecca by her side tending to her the whole time. Alice then sees Bridget again, who explains the story of the poppet.

When Matthew returns, Alice must pretend to be well. We then progress to the aftermath of the trial, as Matthew comes home and reveals to the women that all of the accused (bar Rebecca) will Hang – including Anne West. Matthew implies that he didn’t save Anne to teach Rebecca a lesson. Rebecca, tormented by grief, escapes from the house and goes to the local mill pond. The women follow her there and find her praying over and over. She demands to be swum in the pond and despite Alice’s protests, Matthew lets it happen. Rebecca sinks and drowns as Alice, Mary, and Grace try to pull her out.

Alice turns to Matthew in a rage, and Matthew’s response is cold. Matthew confesses he believes all women to be whores and sinners deep down (perhaps led in part by his father’s diary, in which he admits sleeping with Bridget, his servant – though we gather this was against her will). He locks Alice in her room, where she finds her mother’s missing poppet, left to Alice in the pocket of one of her old dresses. She drowns it in her washtub, reciting the line “deliver us from evil” from the Lord’s Prayer, and as the music rises to a climax, Matthew bursts through the door, drenched and vomiting blood, presumably dying as the lights go out.

Some notes follow...

Staging:

The stage consists of:

wooden frames that look like gallows, but are never used for that purpose, instead forming the walls of the Thorn (within which most of the action takes place)
doors that drop down from the ceiling to fill the frames at various points, adding to the sense of Alice being locked inside, or locked out of Matthew’s dealings – and with the Thorn’s ‘front door’ acting as both the door to freedom and a door between the lit safety of the house and the darkness of the world outside, when Alice ventures out after Matthew’s imp scare to look for his keys
a single bed, belonging to Alice, within her room at the Mistley Thorn
a trunk full of Alice’s mother’s old clothes
what initially seems to be a reflective, but warped surface at the back of the stage – this is later where the ‘pond’ is staged
red chairs placed around the stage (and two hanging from beams) providing the only bright colour. One chair was oddly sawn off halfway up the legs and then placed on a platform to keep it a normal height.
two lights representing candles carried by the characters as they move around the Thorn in night scenes, sometimes placed around the stage. These appeared to be attached to long red strings. (I liked this a lot, in that it added to the sense that these women were being watched – their paths could literally be followed by the string)
a table, at which Alice and Matthew, later Alice and Rebecca, sit to eat

Sound and effects:

Alice burns Matthew’s ‘book of names’, at which point the whole stage is lit red and fire comes out of parts of the stage
suspenseful music plays at various points – the sound design is akin to a horror film, very loud, very ominous, with a definite supernatural bent
we often hear sounds of murmurs and whispers overlapping each other, and the chanting of the names of the accused, really playing up the eerieness (and also, I assume, evoking the town’s gossip and the naming of names taking place – as one character notes, all that is needed is for someone to name a name, and it cannot be taken back)
in the first act, at one point I thought I heard the sound of seagulls (possibly to evoke the sounds of Manningtree, though these birds aren’t ones I’d personally associate with the Stour estuary – goose sounds might be more likely!)

A complex – and in some ways humanising – portrayal of Matthew Hopkins

Matthew was played by an objectively handsome actor (George Kemp, who played Lord Weaver in Bridgerton), believably in his 20s (unlike other depictions which make him seem older to enhance the sense of his authority)
Matthew is portrayed with serious burns on his face and body, as in the book, but these are hard to see on stage, diminishing the effect of his disfigurement from the book (and somewhat tempering the trope of disfigurement corresponding to evil)
in one scene, Matthew becomes hysterical with fear after believing he has seen an imp outside the Thorn. He is comforted by Alice, who tells him “the worst thing you can meet in the dark is another person”, but will not listen to this logic. This suggests he has a real belief in witchcraft and its workings.
the final scene suggests Matthew is a bastard, born as a result of rape. He is killed when Alice drowns a poppet of hair representing him. Spoiler alert: his mother had gone to a man “in a caravan” looking for a fertility charm – he gave her a doll made of his own hair and then raped her). It’s also suggested his mother tried to burn him as a child in the fire to kill him, believing him to have ‘a father above and a father down below’, directly associating Hopkins with Satan. Apparently, only fire or water could kill such a demon.
there was a marked difference in accent choices for the actors playing Hopkins and his fictional sister, Alice, who sound middle/upper class, vs. the exaggerated estuary accents of the servants and Rebecca West.

A complex – if inaccurate – portrayal of Rebecca West

Rebecca was played by Anne Odeke, a Black/mixed race actress, clearly older than the real West (Odeke is perhaps in her early 30s – her playing age is 26-35 years), and plus sized – she is a very obvious visual contrast to the slender (and seemingly younger) white actress playing Alice Hopkins (Alice’s actress, Lily Knight, has a playing age of 21-35 years)
she is made to stay at the Thorn when Matthew takes her out of Colchester Castle, in order to prepare for the trial
she is depicted as having poor table manners, shovelling down food without decorum (Alice chastises her for this, but we later suspect this is related to what she says about starving at Colchester Castle)
Prudence Hart is said to have miscarried in the street outside the church, and the mess left on the road outside the West house. The next morning, it was gone - the local rumour is that Rebecca ate the lost baby
Rebecca says she paid the jailer at Colchester Castle for food. When she leaves, the other women suffer – two die from starvation
she knowingly lies to save herself and her mother, coached by Hopkins, before being betrayed by Hopkins when her mother is found guilty. She seems confident that what she is doing to condemn the other women is a reasonable choice, and shows no remorse about it.
Rebecca acts very worldly – not a naive girl made to do Hopkins’ bidding, but a woman doing what she must for her family
Rebecca supposedly went to live with Alice’s mother-in-law Bridget during Anne West’s earlier imprisonment, making her a source of jealousy for Alice
- she leaves Bridget’s home because she begins to engage in sex work, notably with Thomas Hart, who she supposedly has a 3 year old son by in 1645. When I first read the book, I wondered if this choice was made because Rebecca’s confession contains a sexual component.
she becomes emotionally fraught after Hopkins reveals her mother is guilty and ends up at the “mill pond”, where she demands to be swum and drowns (thus proving she is not a witch)
- the staging of her drowning has her raised up in the air, suspended, as she drowns (perhaps a metaphor for her rising up)
- she dies praying the same prayer over and over – but not a familiar prayer to my admittedly heathen ears. This contrasts to Alice’s repetition of the Lord’s Prayer (in which Alice also repeats the line “deliver us from evil”). Apart from this prayer, Rebecca does not seem to be a godly woman (and neither does her mother, which doesn’t quite tally with the ‘real’ Wests)

Women and relationships:

there are only six characters in the play - Alice, Matthew, Rebecca West, Alice’s mother-in-law Bridget, and Matthew’s servants Mary (a cruel woman, who helps Hopkins willingly) and Grace (a kind girl, a friend to Alice, who is forced into helping Matthew carry out his investigations). Mary "Goody" Phillips is given the role of Matthew's servant here, but I'm not sure if this comes from any real evidence about what her position was, even if her dedication to the cause remains in this iteration.
Rebecca and Alice bond over Alice’s miscarriage (not her first), with Rebecca tending to Alice during a drawn out and largely wordless miscarriage scene
Alice’s final speech to Matthew highlights the vulnerability of women, especially in trying to bear children

Other things of note:

a mention is made of witches burning in Ipswich
some moments from the book are retained without any follow-through, including Matthew believing he has seen an imp, and Bridget saying that boys have been tampering with her thatch
there are a few attempts at setting the scene in terms of location, including descriptions of the ’smell of salt’ in Manningtree (not really how I’d describe the smell of the Stour’s mudflats!) but the accents are the strongest thing tying this play to its geographical setting
some moments of lyrical, dance-like movements – some of Alice’s movements in her grief and while locked away looked akin to demonic possession, or like time was moving back and forth and replaying
blood makes two appearances in the play – in the miscarriage scene, on Alice’s dress and bed linens; and in Matthew’s death scene, when he walks through the door soaked and seems to projectile vomit it out
the costuming is modern for Rebecca and Alice – khaki and bright green dresses respectively, which seem like they are meant to evoke early modern clothing rather than be an accurate historical costuming, with white shifts (nightgowns of some sort) underneath; lots of layers to seemingly represent poverty for Bridget; there are generic maid’s uniforms for Grace and Mary, which again are not particularly of the 17th century; and a more obvious attempt at period dress for Matthew. His costuming choice appears odd – as if he is the most rooted in this time period, though maybe I’m reading too much into that.

Overall I feel that the treatment of the characters I’m most interested in – Rebecca West and Matthew Hopkins – was slightly skewed. Matthew, I think, came across more sympathetically than in the book and Rebecca less so. In both the book and the play, Rebecca’s characterisation diverges from the few facts we do know about her life – she is older, she has a child, she is a sex worker, she doesn’t seem particularly pious… and she dies. Matthew’s also has a few significant inventions in both book and play – from his disfigurement, which becomes part of the reason for his behaviour, to his relationship with his mother and the existence of his sister. Matthew’s two real brothers also get no mention.

Out of all of this, my two biggest qualms are Rebecca’s death and Matthew’s disfigurement. As there is already a storyline about Matthew’s father’s diaries leading to his hatred of women, the storyline about the poppet (i.e. his evil nature and the burning and drowning to try to kill it) just isn’t necessary. All it does is introduce a supernatural/demonic element to a story that’s otherwise been trying very hard to say that the witch trials had no real devils at play, only powerful men.

I also don’t think that killing Rebecca West was a necessary choice. It would have been enough, I think, for her to have disappeared into the night after the betrayal. Her death is a dramatic moment, but the real climax of the play is Matthew’s death and Alice’s drowning of the poppet. This lessens the impact of Rebecca’s death as a dramatic moment. I was slightly disappointed by everything that happens after this moment, as it all feels a bit rushed – Alice chastising Matthew (this only seems to make this whole thing about her, rather than the actual victims) and him locking her away, her freeing herself by drowning the poppet and him dying (I think in the book it was more ambiguous as to whether he died naturally, i.e. whether the drowning of the poppet was a coincidence – I would have preferred the play to have taken this angle). It would become a whole different story, I think, to have Matthew Hopkins die while Rebecca West is somewhere else, surviving what has happened.

If anyone else gets a chance to see this play, I would love to hear your thoughts!