JENNIE MACFIE assesses Rona Murno’s new take on Janet Horne, the last woman burnt as a witch in Scotland

THIS IS NOT the first time a witch has been tortured and burned onstage in the Victorian chocolate box surroundings of the Lyceum Theatre – Stewart Conn’s The Burning harrowed Edinburgh audiences in the early Seventies.

Nearly forty years on, Rona Munro and Dominic Hill return to the subject, turning our gaze away from the glow of the Scottish Enlightenment which has been much celebrated during this summer’s Edinburgh Internationl Festival into the darkness. A darkness which feels very topical and relevant, even though set in 18th century Sutherland in the small parish of Loth, between Brora and Helmsdale.

Kathryn Howden (Janet) Vicki Liddelle (Elspeth) in The Last Witch (© Richard Campbell)

After all, we live in a world in which only last year a child’s headless torso found floating in the Thames turned out to be evidence of witchcraft. The central theme of the play – the power struggles between men and women, town and country, old ways and new ways – highlights a fundamental aspect of the human condition. And of course tales of love, lust, courage and cowardice, have everlasting, universal appeal.

At the heart of the play and the centre of the stage for most of it stands Janet Horne, a strong, combative, wilful woman accused by a neighbour of witchcraft, and the play stands or falls by her. Kathryn Howden turns in a strong, believable performance as Janet; in her offhand, uncaring treatment of her partially disabled daughter Helen (Hannah Donaldson) and casual bullying of her farming neighbours Douglas (George Anton) and Elspeth (Vicky Liddelle) she recalls some of the less likeable characters peopling the tide of reality television.

Her nemesis is Captain David Ross (Andy Clark), the young outsider whose arrival in the small, closeknit parish disturbs the balance. Nick (Ryan Fletcher), a dark Ariel with increasingly ambivalent, diabolic overtones, dances in and out of the action, gradually displacing Niall (Neil McKinven) as Helen’s suitor and eventual saviour.

The lust and spilt blood so sadly missing from the previous week’s Caledonia Sessions is here a-plenty and yet, by portraying Janet’s complexity so truthfully, Munro severs that visceral connection which is needed for the horror of her death to truly shock. The empathetic thread leads instead to poor Helen, whose uncertain future as the curtain falls prevents full closure – it’s refreshing to see a play which ignores Hollywood’s strict scriptures.

Lightning flashes, greedy flames and the ominous flapping of crows’ wings (courtesy of Chris Davey’s lighting and Andrzej Goulding’s video design) provide the evening’s ‘wow’ moments, but even shorn of them, the strength and quality of the writing and the equally strong, quality performances under Dominic Hill’s practised hand would be watchable enough.

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

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