Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern

by Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Walkern, 1712. England has been free from witch-hunts for decades until Jane Wenham is blamed for a tragic death and charged with witchcraft. A terrifying ordeal begins, as the village is torn between those who want to save Jane's life and those who claim they want to save her soul.Inspired by events in a Hertfordshire village, the play explores sex and society's hunger to find and create witches.Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Jane The Witch of Walkern premiered at Watford Palace Theatre before going on UK tour in September 2015, in an Out of Joint, Watford Palace Theatre and Arcola Theatre co-production, in association with Eastern Angles.

136 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2015

About the author

Rebecca Lenkiewicz is a British playwright and screenwriter. She is best known as the author of Her Naked Skin, which was the first original play written by a living female playwright to be performed on the Olivier stage of the Royal National Theatre.

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a number of great late 20th and 21st century plays about the witch hunts in England, Scotland, and what would become the US. Many of those plays deal with issues of gender discrimination, sexuality, and the disciplining of those who question or challenge the social order. And this play is in that same vein. While it may follow a number of conventions, one thing that Jane Wenham does that's unique is that it is set right at the end of the era of witch hunting, when the practice was becoming increasingly unpopular, and so it deals with the death of a tradition that is often presented as a kind of metaphor for the continuing oppression of women. In this play, there is a sharp divide between the two main clergymen--a zealous priest newly arrived in the village, and a bishop residing there on a "break" from his parish in Ireland. The contest over Jane's innocence of guilt is largely fought between them, while Jane herself is oddly divorced from the question of her own fate. But this temporal setting is really interesting because it challenges the sometimes simple feminist implication that the oppression women face today is somehow substantively the same as the oppression they faced historically. This is not to say that women do not continue to face oppression and inequality, but in substantial ways contemporary forms of inequality differ from those of, say, the 18th century.

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The trial and its aftermath are quite powerful, but overall I feel like this topic is presented better elsewhere, and I could have done without the scene of the three women discussing their dalliances with the devil.