The play is actually based on the true story of Matthew Hopkins (Played by George Kemp) who is said to be responsible for executing at least a hundred witches during the English Civil War. You see all of this from the focus of Matthew’s sister, Alice (Played by Lily Knight) as she returns to Manningtree after her husband dies.
It was a ghostly story of a woman who returns to her brother for support but instead finds herself investigating the reasons he keeps leaving the house. The night is filled with some spooky scenes as you see people disappear and reappear on stage and from my seat I was unable to tell how a lot of this was done.
There is very little lighting on stage and this means that the lights are often focused on certain characters. This is used in clever ways to allow those characters to disappear from one scene and suddenly appear in another, as if by magic.
I especially enjoyed the scenes involving Rebecca, the actress (Anne Odeke) provides a brilliant personality for the Rebecca character and this had me sitting on the edge of my seat during all of the scenes involving this character.
The character of Bridge (played by Debra Baker) was fascinating and left a lot of questions regarding Matthew’s scars and it was frustrating that the truth of Mathew’s scars was not completely resolved by the end of the show.
The scenery was simple but magical and this included doors being lowered and raised at certain points and lamps being used to isolate which part of the stage we are able to see. There was also a clever automotive style light that only shone forwards, in the style of a lamp, and this left half the stage unlit allowing plenty of surprises to appear from the dark
Something that was a little odd was that the hand held lights on stage all had wires that could easily be seen as the characters held them but these lights were very tastefully used.
The night was a great show and I would certainly recommend going to see it this Halloween. There are lots of chilling moments that will leave you holding your breath, but for this reason don’t go if you are of a nurvous disposition
The Witchfinder’s Sister – 7 – 30 October 2021