The Manningtree Witches review – Ava Pickett’s gripping follow-up to Tudor hit 1536

Mercury theatre, Colchester The targets of the infamous 17th-century ‘witchfinder general’ narrate a powerful play based on AK Blakemore’s novel‘It does not matter what is true,” a teenager tells us after giving a testimony of witchcraft against a group of women including her own mother. What matters, she says, is “what is written down”. It is advice passed down to Rebecca (Lucy Mangan) by her indomitable mother, Anne (Gina Isaac), in this whiplash of a play, adapted by Ava Pickett from AK Blakemore’s award-winning 2021 novel. What was written down in the real case of the Manningtree witch trials of 1645 is minimal when it comes to the Essex women convicted and hung for devilry by Matthew Hopkins, a self-styled “witchfinder general”.Five women targeted by him jointly narrate here with the primary focus on Rebecca, a clever, beady-eyed observer who tells of how Hopkins (Sam Mitchell) enters the town as an inn-keeper but soon reveals his purpose, with sermons and fearmongering in church. Continue reading...