Review: BOG WITCH, Soho Theatre (Walthamstow)

Rosie Powell

It feels like a beautiful full-circle moment that after performing on every stage at Soho Theatre’s Dean Street venue, legendary theatremaker Bryony Kimmings now christens the new stage of Soho Theatre Walthamstow with a rare new solo show, specially commissioned for the venue’s launch season.

Bog Witch sees unlikely eco-convert Kimmings uprooted from her metropolitan habitat and transplanted with her children and tree-hugging partner in the countryside. A hilarious fish-out-of-water story about an unnatural return to nature, the knowing laughter from the audience declares that Bog Witch has found exactly the right audience in Soho Theatre Walthamstow – liberal, reusable cup owners with all the best intentions of confronting the climate crisis but inextricably tied to an inherently consumerist London lifestyle.

Bog Witch aligns Kimmings’ adjustment to her new earthy, intentional living situation with the seasons – moving from the flighty giddiness of spring, through to the solemn contemplative state of winter, mimicking the wheel of the year, the circle of life. The production is woven with folk magic - from Raf Vartanian and Nathan Vernée’s animated sylvan scenes, to the rustic and wicker accents in Tom Rogers’ set and costume designs, to Tom Parkinson’s flutey and folky musical score.

Kimmings’ show is taut with anxiety that occasionally bursts forth in full-bodied breathlessness. In her search for meaning and wholeness and happiness outside the city, it seems that our stressed and pressed narrator only uncovers more deficiencies, more shortcomings, more blame and shame laid at the feet of humankind.

Kimmings is inexhaustibly charming, dry and self-deprecating as she grapples with the unfathomable threat of the climate crisis. The final note of Bog Witch, after ramping up the existential dread for 90 minutes, is ultimately unifying and rousing, Kimmings mapping her body and her experience onto the earth and its ecosystems and finding harmony at last with nature.

Kiera Saunders’ jaw-dropping masks in particular make the ceremonial epilogue feel like a pagan mass, seasonally appropriate in the approach to Samhain.

Bog Witch is a magical emotional and physical return to the earth. Bryony Kimmings’ performance is sensational, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny.

Unforgettable magic mass in a spectacular new theatre.

**** Four Stars

Reviewed by Livvy Perrett

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