Last Updated on December 14, 2025
An exhilarating musical that subverts the witch hunt
4.0 out of 5.0 starsLike Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Coven opens with the voices of (so-called) witches. Like Macbeth, it speaks strongly to audiences’ obsession with pagan magic and ‘fallen’ women. But where Shakespeare’s pillar of theatre bends to tastes for sinister femininity, from its first beat, Coven reverts and resists the doctrine of witch hunting with energetic, women-led lyricism.
We meet the accused Jenet Device – as Gabrielle Brooks (Comedy of Errors) – just as she’s incarcerated. Device joins other imprisoned women, all denounced, like the Pendle victims, for witchcraft. They’re overseen by a sharp Diana Vickers (I Wish You Well) as the resident jailer. These women transform into musical bards singing folk-rock ballads of betrayals, setups and sexual exploitation at the hands of men.
There’s the healer, Maggie – acted by Jacinta Whyte (Juno and the Paycock) – who treats other prisoners’ ailments with plants (and comically poisons the prison guard). The midwife, Nell – Allyson Ava-Brown (Hamilton) – who delivers a baby in the second act. And Penny Laden (The Ocean at the End of the Lane) as a mother with her pregnant daughter – Lauryn Redding (Standing at the Sky’s Edge) – who was raped and silenced by a powerful landowner. Shiloh Coke (Chiaroscuro) plays this landowner’s well-spoken wife. She’s also been accused and imprisoned.
Coven fixates on internalised misogyny and contested femininity, not easy solidarities. It’s a musical history about how witchcraft was used as a tactic, a tool, a masculine construction designed to silence women. We learn – through comic songs – about James I’s Witchcraft Act of 1604, or the 1486 Catholic treatise on witchcraft. So-called sorcery is never mystified for dramatic tension. This is critical social commentary of great stature. Redding’s song about her mother, sexual assault and kinship with Pendle was a particularly moving gem in the first half.
Throughout Act One, Jenet denies the charges against her. Coven revolves around her realisation that she was groomed by a witch catcher into informing on her innocent family. Letting go of this bogus story, facing the truth, is Jenet’s real trial.
Around this main narrative arc are no less powerful dramas. Coven animates the history of land enclosures – where common land was fenced and privatised, and agricultural communities forced to work for rich barons. Lauryn Redding is brilliant as Rose, one of these dispossessed workers, who clashes with Shiloh Coke’s Alizon, the ‘fallen’ wife of Rose’s landowner employer. This unnamed sexual predator is also the father of Rose’s unborn child (who arrives at the end of play).
What stands out in Coven are the highly technical demands of Miranda Cromwell’s (The Little Mermaid) production. Performers with multiple roles change costumes at speed; live flames lick the front of the stage in the second act; Rosalind Ford and Diana Vickers expertly control a child-sized puppet! Every member of the musical ensemble except Jennifer Whyte (who is assured as the musical backbone on keys) has roles beyond their instruments.
This dramatic fluidity worked seamlessly with the musical’s subject matter. Just as boundaries of class and profession dissolve after accusations of witchcraft, so boundaries of ‘actor’ and ‘musician’ dissolve in challenging these medieval narratives. In form and content, Coven is a masterclass in musical solidarity.
The performers in Coven are clearly working at their limits. At one point, Shiloh Coke brilliantly kicks a wooden bench across the set. It slides to within inches of the stage edge (level with audience heads in the front row). This was not reckless press night antics but a highly practised routine. An action (literally) pushed to within inches of failure.
Coven is full of such details – moments of precision, slick transitions, almost-dangerous gestures. So exacting was the organisation that at times Coven felt like removing the face of a cuckoo clock and watching the cogs whir synchronously. The production sings – it succeeds as a whole – but there are details to delight in, too.
What struck me most deeply was Coven‘s reworking of English oral tradition. Daisy Chute’s expansive musical training gave the folk-rock sound real gravitas; Brewer’s lyrics were well-judged. It creates a musical world that echoes contemporary artists – I thought of Johnny Flynn, Laura Marling, Cosmo Sheldrake – and age-old English melodies, together. This is an expansive, multilayered drama with charm to spare.
Coven runs at Kiln Theatre from 10th November to 17th January.
Kiln Theatre
Kilburn High Road
London
NW6 7JR
Looking for something different? Check the winter season events at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
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