You know about Salem, yes? And Pendle? Less well-known but in some ways of greater significance are the Manningtree witch trials of 1645, which marked the debut of the infamous Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled ‘Witch Finder General’ of the 17th century, so brilliantly portrayed by Vincent Price in the 1968 film of that name.
AK Blakemore’s poetic fiction, The Manningtree Witches, was dramatised by Ava Pickett into a play with the same title that had its debut at the National in March. Pickett’s play centred on one of the accusers, but in Deliver Us from Evil, Kelsey Norris focuses on one of the accused. Elizabeth Clarke, a poor, disabled woman who was the first to be investigated and the first to die in a grim mass execution of so-called witches at Chelmsford.
Partly crowdfunded and presented by Khaos Productions, Deliver Us from Evil dramatises the events that led up to the trials and, in a coda, what happened afterwards. Unlike The Manningtree Witches, the play focuses not on the systemic misogyny of religion in the seventeenth century but on the brutal reality of the investigation. Clarke is accused of witchcraft by a neighbour and tortured by Hopkins and his associate, who use techniques depressingly familiar to us from the brutal treatment of Iraqi prisoners and others by the US Army in the Abu Ghraib prison.
Deliver Us from Evil centres on a superb performance by Anastasia Babich as Clarke, orphaned after the execution of her mother and in danger of losing her own life and her own daughter. The mental consequences of torture are not easy to convey, at least not on stage, but in the play’s pivotal scene, Babich takes Clark through denial, anger, bargaining and depression before ending with an inversion of acceptance as the innocent and defenceless Clarke becomes truly dangerous first to other women and then to the Witch Finder General himself. Hopkins, played by Finton McKlustey, is initially a milksop with an overbearing mother – a nicely lightening cameo by Emily Fellows, and it is some time before what might be described as the real Hopkins comes out. As Hopkins’ fellow ‘witch-pricker’, John Stearne, a gruff Rob Wallis has a more nuanced character to portray, although the historical evidence for the characterisation is perhaps lacking. And the cast is completed by Nika Kamaeva, standing for the accusers but far more of a witch than Clarke.
Discounting Wicca, homegrown witchcraft ended in Britain with the conviction – in 1941! – of Helen Duncan for pretending to conjure spirits. However, an imported form survives as witnessed by the horrific, and still – officially – unsolved case of the torso in the Thames, and in other parts of the world superstition and ignorance mean that witchcraft remains a very real danger to the disabled, the elderly and the feminine. A point that the playwright seems to be making at the conclusion of this intriguing little play.
Recommended.
Review by Louis Mazzini
“Can a person be born evil? Was my mother? Am I doomed to her fate?”
Elizabeth Clarke has been scorned and feared by her neighbours ever since her mother was executed as a witch. When unexplainable misfortune strikes Manningtree, Elizabeth is herself accused and arrested for witchcraft. Matthew Hopkins is a young man who has yet to escape the shadow of his deceased minister father. Suspecting Satan may walk the Essex countryside, and seeing this as a chance to prove himself, Hopkins volunteers to interrogate the witch. The events that follow that fateful night would lead to the executions of as many as 100 innocent people.
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Bridewell Theatre, 3 to 6 August 2026
Presented as part of The Camden Fringe
