The Ungodly

Written by Joanna Carrick

Some plays ring on into the night, long after the curtain falls. You see their reflection in windows as you navigate your way through the next few days. They call at you in the middle of a conversation: ‘You see? Here I am, and my story is true,’ they say. 

The Ungodly, which I saw in Ipswich, and has now transferred to London, has such a sustain pedal. 

I was initially taken with the play’s simplicity. The staging was sparse. I love it when art is created out of very little, and here a kaleidoscopic hand turns the bare minimum into something very rich. Just four actors, some straw, a table, a crib, a shawl, a hat. 

The plot is based in Mistley, in Essex, near where I live. The witchfinder general is part of history here: he is featured on the information boards I pass when I run the Essex Way from Manningtree, onwards to Wrabness and Harwich. The play imagines the making of this man, Matthew Hopkins, in the mid-seventeenth century. 

‘In the end, this was not really a play about Matthew. It was a play about women.’

What is it about the play that has clung onto me? Was it the sight of a tiny woman, cowering under the dark, elongating shadow of an increasingly-powerful man? I work in education policy, and find many men talking a lot, being very certain, and questioning whether I really understand. And, of course, we live with the backdrop of war in the news, where children burn, and men take centre stage. Maybe it was that.

In the end, this was not really a play about Matthew. It was a play about women. There is a line in the final moments that was released with such unthrottled anguish that it hit me like an anvil to the womb. In the seventeenth century there were women dealing, as they do now, with childbirth, blood, fear, death, and a constant refrain from men who want to tell them how it is – how to be sad, how to believe, how to recover, how to be resilient. 

Fundamentally though, the play’s longest note, for me at least, is about light and discernment. How very Quaker! What starts as a restless searching for truth gets taken over by a preoccupation with darkness. Where is the evil? In whose bed does the devil lie? 

Thank goodness for Advices & queries 1. I wonder sometimes whether it’s all we need. This play traces a couple who begin joyfully, in love. But, as the shadows lengthen around them, they are led down a dark alley. The lights gradually flicker and die, until they realise they are lost. ‘Take heed, dear friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts.’ If only. 

I don’t know whether Joanna Carrick knew she was writing a Quaker play but, by golly, it’s good. Go and see it if you can. ν 

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The Ungodly runs at the Southwark Playhouse until 16 November 2024.

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