Witch Hunt – Traverse Theatre

One could happily have stayed seated and watched this show all over again. Straight away, not tomorrow night (the second and last night in Edinburgh and, sadly, of the entire tour). It had almost everything; music, dance, poetry, slapstick, puppetry, magic, limericks, puns, double-entendre, songs, nudity, but above all… laughter. Abigail Dooley & Emma Edwards did not name their company ‘A & E Comedy’ half-heartedly. There was even some of the most genuine audience participation yet witnessed though in this day and age it’s pretty cathartic to join in with the refrain ‘It’s a shitshow, an asshole rodeo’.

A one-woman show with a twist this Ricket and Rattled along from the opening scene – featuring some ill-fitting dentures and malfunctioning hands – through to the last. There’s Hansel & Gretel. A nauseous Mr Right with the most appalling of appalling chat-up lines. A Witchfinder General. Some creepy market hawkers selling baskets of penises and/or potions and charms, consumption of the latter resulting in an hilarious squirty-boobed Red Stepford Robot stagger-strutting towards the audience addressing every engageé as ‘John’. There’s a routine involving a musical saw that lays waste to the famous Deli scene in When Harry Met Sally. Gwyneth Paltrow attracts a barb, Radio 4’s Martha Kearney features and it’s likely Eric Cantona would have liked an opportunity to explain to the students in the audience the nature of premium lager. Though they clearly recognised the significance of some of the dance moves better than their elders.

So hilarious and entertaining was it that the theme of man’s readiness to subjugate anything or anyone it felt intimidated by – in this case capable women – was a bit lost. It’s sobering to think that in many areas of the modern world women are still subject to inequalities. Wind the clock back a few hundred years and – even in a scenic location like St Andrews – it’s a fact that vast numbers, deemed witches, were actually murdered.

Reviewer: Roger Jacobs

Reviewed: 16th November 2022

North West End UK Rating: ★★★★