Rupert Goold has a fascination with the devil. It has served him well as a director. Nearly 20 years ago, against the odds, he put on Paradise Lost in Northampton, and made it luscious. He has conjured demons in Macbeth, and 21st-century monsters in Enron. In Women, Beware the Devil, the fascination is evident in his whirligig staging. The trouble is that though Lulu Raczka’s new play about evil and change has many glinting moments, it lacks a driving force.
Raczka mashes together the voluptuous violence of 17th-century drama and a sardonic knowingness: it as if she has Googled “change” and “evil” and decided to animate all the results. It is 1642. The king is under threat from Cromwell’s army. Privilege is being challenged, along with the enthroned position of men. In a stately pile a clever servant girl, thought to be a witch, is one cause of disturbance: Alison Oliver cleverly makes her both vulnerable and toughened. The toffs are worse: determined at all poisonous costs to hang on to their inheritance, Lydia Leonard’s sinuous heiress is part serpent, part gimlet-eyed executive. Her doltish brother – an enjoyably grotesquely Leo Bill – blusters around with flying ringlets and groping hands. Beside them, the fellow with horns beneath his hat looks staunch. But perhaps he is shape-shifting into them – who knows?
