THE UNGODLY at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★

“well worth a jaunt back 400 years, if only to take a peek at ourselves”

“All is God’s will,” declares Puritan father Richard Edwards, trying to find comfort in his serial bereavement.

The Almighty’s works appear particularly capricious and cruel in writer/director Joanna Carrick’s careful re-examination of the 1645 witchcraft trials of Mistley and Manningtree.

Such is the Lord’s evident delight in his culling that he picks up his pace until his efforts appear indistinguishable from those of the Devil who also frequents these rural Essex byways, scaring horses, killing cows and taking the form of kitlings to fool innocent girls.

Despite this and with mighty hearts, Richard and wife Susan resolve on joy. They re-commit themselves to sin-free lives to ensure the next child escapes the Lord’s rapacious harvest and makes it out the cradle.

However, into this set-up comes tormented mope and wannabe witch-finder Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Moisy, burdened with a stutter and too many calcified pronouncements). He has other ideas, seeing sin everywhere but most especially in women who, in his eyes, are minxes, fornicators and sufficiently vacant between the ears for the Devil to take up residence without overcrowding.

From this brew – tragedy, suspicion, grief, religious fervour – a story of slow-burn paranoia and witchcraft emerges. Eventually, for the purposes of this drama, all is heaped on gullible and blubbing Rebecca West (a deft cameo by Rei Mordue) who exposes the hollow posturings of the vainglorious Matthew by dint of being little more than a screeching, immature girl playing silly games.

It is a time of superstition, mass delusion, blame, shame and misogyny. Never more relevant then.

The heart of this drama, though, remains the couple. Nadia Jackson as Susan gives a gut-wrenching portrayal of fathomless grief while booming Christopher Ashman is powerful and charming as a man with a predisposition to joy who finds himself lost in a world he once commanded but now rarely understands.

Under Carrick’s direction, this episodic play is never more effective than when these two are fumbling and flirting their way into an initially well-starred marriage. Their union remains strong, their chemistry palpable, and it is a shame that we lose sight of them when the story demands they temporarily relinquish character and each other in order to hurry home the message.

Indeed, these two performances outpace a script which never quite moves fast enough and, at times, becomes too enamoured of its own research, preferring a meticulous accumulation of oddities to a truly gripping rampant maelstrom of hysteria.

Susan’s growing bitterness and Richard’s surrender to casuistry are the slow, remorseless drumbeat of the piece. Don’t lose focus, we cry from the dark.

Although the drama never truly reaches the cathartic heights the story demands, these two performances of intensity and passion are truly admirable. The Ungodly is well worth a jaunt back 400 years, if only to take a peek at ourselves.

THE UNGODLY at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 24th October 2024

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Bernie Totten

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

FOREVERLAND | ★★★★ | October 2024

JULIUS CAESAR | ★★★ | September 2024

DORIAN: THE MUSICAL | ★★½ | July 2024

THE BLEEDING TREE | ★★★★ | June 2024

FUN AT THE BEACH ROMP-BOMP-A-LOMP!! | ★★★ | May 2024

MAY 35th | ★★★½ | May 2024

SAPPHO | ★★ | May 2024

CAPTAIN AMAZING | ★★★★★ | May 2024

WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND | ★★★★★ | April 2024

SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE VALLEY OF FEAR | ★★½ | March 2024

POLICE COPS: THE MUSICAL | ★★★★ | March 2024

CABLE STREET – A NEW MUSICAL | ★★★ | February 2024

THE UNGODLY

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★★★½

“an engrossing and innovative watch”

This new revival of French-Canadian playwright Carole Fréchette’s 2002 work, Seven Days in the Life of Simon Labrosse is a compelling piece of metatheatre that plays with the boundaries between the real and the fictional, stage and audience.

The principal narrative of the play is, as the title suggests, a retelling of seven days in the life of Simon Labrosse, an unemployed man in an unspecified city. His existence is shaped by sending voice cassettes to his girlfriend Natalie somewhere in Africa, where she is ‘helping the helpless’, confrontations with his landlord and people repossessing his property, and get-rich-quick schemes including working as a sentence finisher and an emotional stuntman.

However, the action begins even before the metaphorical curtain rises on the narrative of the piece. Rob Wyn Jones, playing Simon Labrosse, and Elaine Bastible, as a hired actor also called Natalie, chat on stage about him borrowing her ‘ghetto blaster’ (an unfortunate term that serves as a reminder of the age of the play). Wyn Jones is also forced to leave the stage to go and get actor-director Tony Wadham, playing his depressed neighbour Leo, half dragging him on stage to take his position for the start.

Before telling the story of Labrosse’s life, each of the characters introduces themselves and begins to display their eccentricities. Natalie has an obsession with the workings of the inside of her body, and takes every opportunity she can to address the audience directly on this topic and to attempt to play a mysterious VHS – the content of which is only revealed in the chaotic climax; and Leo, who suffered a tragic accident as a child that left him unable to experience positive emotions, is cast in the role of many surly interlocutors in Labrosse’s life. His main intention in the play is to share his deeply depressing poetry.

The most exciting and innovative moments in the piece come from this trifold relationship between the real-life actors, playing actors within the play, who are in turn playing the characters of the narrative. Watching the actors within the play struggle for control of the piece, as Simon Labrosse tries to keep Leo and Natalie on message is very funny and more interesting than the sketch-like events of the days of the play’s primary story. The actors all give very strong performances: the interplay between them feels natural and is especially commendable given the difficulties involved in playing an actor playing a character.

Wadham’s direction capitalises on the layout of the White Bear Theatre, with the seats lining two sides of the stage, and the physical comedy is outstanding. The set design is evocative of the early twenty-first century and the attention to detail in the costumes is fantastic. This is especially true in the case of Natalie, whose green jumper, blue jeans, knitted shoulder bag and white cowboy boot ensemble fits the oddness of her character perfectly.

Seven Days in the Life of Simon Labrosse is, therefore, a well-acted and intriguing piece that slips between various narrative and structural layers. While it is rather dated in some respects (although 2002 is not 1955), such as the aforementioned ‘ghetto blaster’ and repeated references to Africa as a ‘Dark Continent’, overall, it is an engrossing and innovative watch.

THE UNGODLY at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★

“well worth a jaunt back 400 years, if only to take a peek at ourselves”

THE UNGODLY at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 24th October 2024

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Bernie Totten

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

THE UNGODLY

THE UNGODLY

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE at the White Bear Theatre

★★★½

“an engrossing and innovative watch”

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE at the White Bear Theatre

Reviewed on 24th October 2024

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Henrietta Hale

Previously reviewed at this venue:

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE

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