This confounding play is nothing if not unique. It is partly about devilry. That much is clear because the devil turns up in the first scene to address us directly. Then, a 17th-century stablehand, Agnes (Alison Oliver), rumoured to have dark powers, makes a Faustian pact with the lady of the house, Elizabeth (Lydia Leonard). Agnes travels though the household, rising in status but never losing her reputation as a witch.
What begins as a spin on The Crucible, with Puritan hysteria and hearsay along with rumblings of the civil war of 1642, goes off in strange directions. The plot bends and twists from bedroom kink to incestuous assault and pregnancy.
