Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds
An all-female cast deliver Tallulah Brown’s play about 17th-century East Anglians under threat of the self-styled Witchfinder General

The past sings to the present in Tallulah Brown’s new play with music, exploring the persecution of women during Suffolk’s 17th-century witch trials. But Brown wisely leaves us to draw our own parallels, bucking a trend for overly didactic historical drama that lurches into the modern day. Instead, the story remains rooted in the local landscape and the writing wears its research lightly as Brown bears witness to how fractured societies seek scapegoats and subordinates, especially under the influence of a small man longing for supremacy.

Such is its portrayal of Matthew Hopkins (Emily Hindle, from an all-female cast of six), who made a small fortune as the self-styled Witchfinder General – “like he’s a soldier, except he’s not,” observes gimlet-eyed Anne Alderman (Claire Storey). Anne tends to the townspeople like she does her garden, and Brown supplies a virtual index of medicinal herbs – a reminder of the lost knowledge of such female healers targeted as witches.

At Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, 11-22 March