Written by Richard Shannon, directed by Amy Leach and produced by The Dukes, Lancaster.
It could have been the long shadows growing across the solid stonework, the elongated pointed fingers of outstretched hands picking at the walls, the air thick with history in Hoghton Tower’s banqueting hall ... but Sabbat, The Dukes’ touring production about the Lancashire Witches, moved me more than any theatre piece has moved me for some time.
The 4 cast members owned the small performance space, with the room’s finery and antiques adding another character and dimension to the piece, slipping stealth-like around the audience and drawing us into the action. Such intimacy, when the performances are so equally matched, makes for truly engaging theatre but I have to admit (and I’m sure this is the skill of writer Richard Shannon and Director Amy Leach) that we are cleverly drawn to each of the characters in turn, have sympathy for them all and their social situation but ultimately know that some great wrong is being done here – and that wrong is meted most on Alice Nutter and Jennet Device.
The 400th Anniversary of the Lancashire Witch Trials this year has certainly brought this incredible story back into our lives. Sabbat, a dramatisation of events that may or may not have happened, has offered an alternative view to the only accounts available, the court reports of Thomas Potts. These served to show how the might of the law fell heavily on a group of largely uneducated, inarticulate women, terrified and weak through incarceration in the dark cells of Lancaster Castle.
As the second act reaches a climax, local magistrate Roger Nowell (played with utmost authority by Robert Calvert) is bound by duty despite the protestations of his wife Judith (Hannah Emanuel – the stagecraft and sensitivity which showed the graphic loss of their child, was incredibly powerful in its simplicity) and we finally see Alice Nutter (Christine Mackie) and Jennet Device (Nisa Cole) alone, with prayers their only consolation in the face of death. This was a poignant moment as accused and accuser, are united. Both Christine as the elder, more educated and kindly wise woman Alice and Nisa, as the young, spirited and unwashed beggar Jennet, gave superb performances; Nisa, wholly believable as a child and Christine convincingly measured and calm as she is caught up in events beyond her control.
I suspect, I was further moved by the knowledge that James I, whose preoccupation with witchcraft and conspiracy led to the wholesale persecution of ‘witches’ across the country, had also been entertained in this very banqueting hall (here in 1617 he’d knighted a fine loin of Lancashire beef, ‘Sir Loin’). Could this wonderful performance be exorcising any lingering ghosts or, were the shivers down my spine the spirits of similarly wronged women throughout history, simply making their presence felt? Certainly, as a woman, I was starting to appreciate this particular injustice even more.
The production is currently touring outside Lancashire but returns for performances at The Muni, in Colne 10-14 July and is reprised at The Dukes, Lancaster 17-21 July. See it in Colne, close to Pendle where the witch hunt began or, in Lancaster where these women met their tortuous end. Either way, expect to be touched by this dramatisation and these voices from the past – knowing the trials and executions were very real and that this witches’ tale is an indelible part of Lancashire history.
Anna Izza saw Sabbat at Hoghton Tower on 20 June 2012
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