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.