Women, Beware the Devil (Modern Plays)

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This odd treatment of early English Civil War (say 1642) landed gentry often hits the mark but also misfires like the musket wielded by a terrifying mute Roundhead who enters the manor house at the close of an arduous evening. But in some of the most candid dismantling of the fourth wall that I can remember, Nathan Armarkwei-Laryea as the Devil (sporting a wonderful pair of miniature horns and reading the Evening Standard) has told us in a framing device that the piece will be a long haul. He adds that we can at least look forward to sex scenes and an execution. Women, Beware the Devil will feature set design by Miriam Buether, costume design by Evie Gurney, lighting design by Tim Lutkin, and sound design by Adam Cork.

Women, Beware the Devil London Reviews and Tickets Women, Beware the Devil London Reviews and Tickets

Resembles a Dutch painting … Lola Shalam, Aurora Dawson-Hunte and Carly-Sophia Davies in Women, Beware the Devil. Photograph: Marc Brenner I find it annoying, the way that lots of female characters are written as though they could be a man, but they have a woman’s name,” says Raczka. There’s a lot to enjoy - seductions and betrayals, temptations and terror. And there will be sex and violence!” So runs the flip opening spiel to this funny-peculiar effort by London-born Lulu Raczka, which ambitiously transports us to superstition-steeped 1640. Those lines are delivered by the Devil himself – chattily conspiratorial, horn-headed. Director Rupert Goold really does create a world for us and then punctures it with too many present-day asides from the characters. Agnes closes the first act with a comic “Boo!” at punters in the first row of the stalls. Pedant that I am, I started to hear what I thought were anachronisms in vocabulary until I realized that even in the main dialogue, Raczka is mischievously using pastiche period speech mixed in with modern-day idiom. Saying this, her writing often takes wing and is truly poetic. Goold, who applies a seductive filmic gloss to proceedings, could surely have trimmed the over-long first act. Theatre includes: Hamlet; Faith, Hope and Charity; Tartuffe (National Theatre); The 306 Dawn (National Theatre of Scotland ); Her Naked Skin (Salisbury Playhouse); Romeo and Juliet Vernon God Little (The Space); Homo Sacer

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Lydia Leonard is Elizabeth, mistress of a provincial country house. Primogeniture means that the estate will go to a cousin if her elder brother Edward (Leo Bill) cannot produce an heir. Edward is just about sane but eccentric and like Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer (I gave up on noting Raczka’s influences) he has no social or sexual interest in women of his own class but is libidinous with the maid servants and successful in impregnating them. As Deputy Head of Wigs: Hamilton; Beautiful – The Carole King Musical (West End); Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (West End/ UK tour) .

Women, Beware the Devil review - The Stage

And here lies the problem at the centre of the play: when given the power to have anything you desire, what do you want? Riled by Elizabeth in the first scene, Agnes eventually reveals her desire to be ‘perfect’ – to feel silk on her skin, to eat off china, to have read every single book in the house, to own every piece of art in the gallery, and to be so knowledgeable, beautiful, and refined that anybody who looks at her is overcome with their own inadequacy. you like theatrical experiences that are not easy to classify or explain, covering several themes, directed with visual flare and well acted

The full cast is announced for the Almeida Theatre’s Women, Beware The Devil, written by playwright Lulu Raczka, directed by Rupert Goold and running from 11 February – 25 March 2023. Double, double, toil and trouble: what strange sorcery is this? Lulu Raczka’s new play sounded so enticing – a murky brew of witchcraft, politics and revenge tragedy – but it turns out that it is more likely to induce indigestion than intoxication. Oozing lurid imagery, it has a certain appealing, audacious swagger, thanks in no small part to a sumptuous production by Rupert Goold. But it is also a frustrating mess, its notions about class, gender and power barely conceived, let alone developed.

Women, Beware The Devil Reviews | West End Theatre

The sweep of literary and visual influences are easy to spot: The Crucible, Women Beware Women, Vermeer, even Downton Abbey. Thematically, it foregrounds the question of inherited estates – wealth and class - and how that relates to individual and national identity. Women Beware The Devil (Image: Marc Brenner) For Lady Elizabeth nothing is more important than protecting her family’s legacy and their ancestral home. When that comes under threat, she elicits the help of Agnes, a young servant suspected of witchcraft. But Agnes has dark dreams of her own for this house. A wild and unwieldly new work from Lulu Raczka" "The price of ambition is, of course, the occasional misfire"Rupert Goold will direct Leo Bill, Carly-Sophia Davies, Aurora Dawson-Huntr, Ioanna Kimbook, Nathan Laryea, Lydia Leonard, Alison Oliver and Lola Shalam. Set in 1640s England, Lady Elizabeth tries to protect her family’s legacy when it’s under threat. She calls upon Agnes, a servant suspected of witchcraft, who tries to elicit her dark dreams on the house. In Women, Beware the Devil, that evil shows itself in the role of Elizabeth, who as a noblewoman is barred from owning property, or making a life for herself – so she shamelessly manipulates her brother into doing what she wants. England, 1640. A war is brewing. Rumours are flying. A household is in crisis... and the Devil's having some fun. For Lady Elizabeth, nothing is more important than protecting her family's legacy and their ancestral home. When that comes under threat, she elicits the help of Agnes, a young servant suspected of witchcraft. But Agnes has dark dreams of her own for this house.

Women, Beware the Devil - Bloomsbury Publishing Women, Beware the Devil - Bloomsbury Publishing

For Lady Elizabeth nothing is more important than protecting her family’s legacy and their ancestral home. When that comes under threat, she elicits the help of Agnes, a young servant suspected of witchcraft.For the Almeida: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second; Against; Carmen Disruption; Little Revolution; The ; King Lear; Filumena; Measure for Measure; When the Rain Stops Falling. As Deputy Head of Wigs and Makeup: The Sound of Music (International tour); Harry Potter and The Cursed Child (West End). Production and cast are both excellent. The second act is a disjointed mess that keeps flying off in different directions, never resolved.