Review of ‘Deliver Us From Evil’: “New witch-trial play is no theatrical crucible”

Every story has been told. But not every story needs to be told again. Especially when they don’t have anything else to say; that’s the difference between a compelling reinterpretation and a derivative piece. The former speaks to a new audience with different lenses and its own voice. The latter shows no vision, and the weight of its predecessor silences it. I can’t say I am without sin (especially after last weekend), but I feel confident enough to point fingers at this play. Not to accuse it of siding with the Devil but of unoriginality — and a lack of craft.

I don’t expect every show to have the wit, introspection, and elaborateness of Arthur Miller’s oeuvre. But if your script explores religious zealotry through a historical account involving witch trials, you should prepare yourself for scrutiny. Not that it’s necessary in this case. Apart from its premise, there is no trace of Arthur Miller’s writing. And that’s precisely the problem: no substance, no depth, and no fulfilling plot or character development. Just a sequence of events with hardly any dramatic impact. And absolutely no soul.

The personages are extremely archetypal. And even by those standards, they aren’t satisfactory. None of them experiences a proper journey. Their motivations are vapid and often cliched. There are no layers. All they do is either incriminate or be incriminated. But the text doesn’t delve into the reasons behind their bigotry. Or the possibility that they may have a hidden agenda. Consequently, all that we witness is a limp, solitary woman being suspected of becoming Satan’s mistress, followed by an excruciatingly boring interrogation that, much like the rest of the text, fails to build any tension or deliver any pathos.

Not only is the approach vapid, but it’s also contradictory at several moments. After a most insipid monologue by its tragic heroine, Elizabeth Clarke, the show features Hopkins, later appointed Witchfinder General, supporting the charges against her before his sceptical mother. Two scenes later, her rational mindset seems to have evaporated, as she joins the extremist side without any explanation. Similarly, the script tries to criticise the gender-biased attitudes of the time, usually through rather clumsy, unsubtle dialogue. Yet, all female roles come across as slightly anachronistic, exhibiting too much autonomy for the era they supposedly belong to.

It’s always refreshing to find some solace in the acting. Sadly, that’s not something we can take shelter in here. For the most part, the portrayals are clunky and hardly credible. There is no nuance and nearly no rapport. Some actors display better technique than others. But even so, there’s little competence, and the whole thing comes off as stiff, unprepared, and widely unresourceful.

Some acknowledgement should be given to the lighting. Albeit not too intricate, it’s appropriately atmospheric. The same applies to the staging, whose uncomplicated black box conveys the right ominous tone. But there’s no further praise to give to any other element of Deliver Us From Evil, whose imitative nature and limited dramaturgical understanding result in quite a dire execution. The kind no one should have been condemned to.

Deliver Us From Evil plays at London’s Bridewell Theatre until 6 June. Tickets are available on the following link.

By Guillermo Nazara