Free spirits in The Last Witch

Edinburgh Theatre: In her first play at the Edinburgh International Festival, Rona Munro has fashioned a lively feminist fable from the few documented facts about the last woman to be killed for witchcraft in Scotland. Janet Horne (itself a generic Scottish term for witches, so that may not even be her name), mother of a daughter born with deformities, was burned in 1727 at Dornoch, a small town in the northern Highlands — incidentally, more recently famous as the location of Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s wedding.

The play starts with Horne (Kathryn Howden), a feisty and free-spirited middle-aged widow who is believed to have "the cure" for various ailments, being accused of putting a curse on her neighbour’s cattle after a petty dispute over a field boundary. Into town comes new sheriff Captain Ross, all silver buttons and self-important swagger, to investigate the claim.
Despite him being much younger and from a different class, they embark on a passionate affair but when she humiliates him by revealing his sexual inadequacies and cowardly past as a soldier, the Captain takes revenge by condemning her to death for being a witch. The scenes in which he sadistically taunts her into making a false confession — while she is chained to a contraption that prevents her standing properly, and has been driven mad by lack of sleep — are gripping.

Munro’s frequently witty play is given some fine directorial flourishes by Dominic Hill in a co-production between the Traverse (of which he is artistic director) and the International Festival. But there is a problem at its heart: had she stuck simply to her engaging imagined story, Munro’s play would not have to bear comparison with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, in which the 1692 Salem Witch Trials serve as an allegory for communist witch hunts in McCarthy-era America. By introducing a Devil figure, Nick (Ryan Fletcher), who sleeps with Horne’s teenage daughter Helen and is present at her burning, Munro, I assume, is making a bigger point; what that is, though, never becomes clear.

The acting by the cast of seven cannot be faulted, however, and there’s an extraordinarily powerful central performance from Howden, with great support from Andy Clark as the Captain and Hannah Donaldson as Helen.

Until Saturday. Information: 0131 473 2000, www.eif.co.uk.

The Last Witch
Royal Lyceum Theatre
Edinburgh Festival