It is 1644. We are in the God-fearing English countryside. God and simplicity are the foundation of the community.
Susan and her husband, Richard Edwards, have had the misfortune of losing all four of their babies. Trying to understand why this has happened, we witness the crisis of this couple and how they believe it fits into their faith-filled lives. They have tried to live a devoted and pious life.
But they have sinned. They sense that God is punishing them. They first blame themselves: Richard for having been too forceful and Susan for being too tempting.
Matthew Hopkins, Susan’s brother-in-law, has found his calling and declared himself Witch-Finder General. Throughout the country, witches are being held responsible for various evils. In the end, Susan and Richard blame their loss on the local women: witches.
Hopkins will seek out all of the local women and interrogate them until they have confessed all of their sins. Hopkins, with the help and support of Susan and Richard, is determined to find the one who is responsible for the babies’ deaths.
Their chief witness, a very young Rebecca West, is interrogated and bullied until she gives up the names of everyone from a meeting she has attended which includes her mother. These women, witches, will all hang.
“The Ungodly is based on a true story.” The witch hunters in the UK alone are accredited with the deaths of 300. This is easy to believe; England for centuries has been the land of elves, imps and various spirits. But witches are the scapegoats of the ills of the world. In the United States, playwright Arthur Miller found them in Salem, Massachusetts: The Crucible.
Playwright / director Joanna Carrick offers a view of what this life might have been like. Nadia Jackson as Susan Edwards and Christopher Ashman as Richard Edwards are well matched. Vincent Moisy as Matthew Hopkins grows quickly from the stuttering, recently widowed to the self-proclaimed deliverer of witches. Rei Mordue plays the bullied and terrified Rebecca West, not quite yet adult.
But there are some lapses in the drama. It feels as if playwright Carrick is being loyal to the history at the expense of the drama.
At the very top of the show, Susan has recently lost her sister and her sister’s baby. It is a beautiful, well-conceived moment. We are not told how or why these deaths are relevant.
Susan avows to never marry (we don’t know why) but quickly accepts Richard’s proposal (we don’t know why). And the first baby is conceived out of wedlock. God has punished them with the death of their first. And second. And third. And fourth.
The Edwards mourn the death of four babies before the blame shifts to witches. But they are only trying to find who is responsible for their first. (We don’t know why.)
Matthew Hopkins grows from stuttering, shy man into a force of nature who has dubbed himself Witch-Finder General. (We don’t know why.) Moisy handles this transition deftly.
Sadly, director Carrick has not helped her actors to find the humanity. We don’t know what brings Matthew Hopkins to the role of headhunter. Susan is raging for the deaths, kill them all, until the last moment when she slides from angry blame to “have we made a mistake?” Rei Mordue manages a terrified Rebecca West, but it is all at a utilitarian one note.
The set works extremely well. It’s wonderful to see the actors deconstruct a pile of furniture creating a living space in the beginning and move the pieces around the stage from scene to scene. The sparse costumes feel very real, if maybe a little too pristine. The script is a little overwritten at 2 hours and 5 minutes with interval. It offers us a very interesting and tested family trying to deal with the mysteries of faith and tragedy. The actors do their best to make it live. We love watching them move around and interact with each other.
The script may be very faithful to history, but we have difficulty believing the details if we aren’t provided the information for the action, the humanity. There is so much good about this production that it loses to the loyalty to historic details.