In 1621 one Elizabeth Sawyer, inevitably a poor, old woman, was hanged as a witch in London.  A play, The Witch of Edmonton, loosely based on the trial and events leading up to it, hit the boards shortly after.  It was a popular success.  Now Jen Silverman has taken the framework of that Jacobean tragicomedy and grafted onto it a critique of late stage capitalism.  The result is Witch, currently playing at Soulpepper in a production directed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster.

Silverman does manage to create a complex and interesting Elizabeth Sawyer, played excellently by Tantoo Cardinal.  Her unusual relationship with the young Devil (Nicholas Eddie) sent to tempt her constitutes the plays most engaging element.  The problem is everything else.  The other four characters; a rich member of the gentry; Sir Arthur (Oliver Dennis), his gay morris dancing son; Cuddy (Thomas Mitchell Barnet), the poor “boy of parts” he is grooming as his successor; Frank (Shawn Ahmed), and the downtrodden maid who is secretly married to Frank (Heeyun Park) are basically cardboard cutouts and their rather tedious and clichéed drama is only tenuously connected to Elizabeth’s story.

So what do they do?  They play out a pretty standard “who gets to inherit” jealousy plot but with modern psychobabble dialogue and tons of anachronisms; which are maybe intended as comic but don’t really work.  The Devil turns out to be a junior and not terribly talented operative of Hell plc who does the most effective (not very) tempting his corporate sensitivity training will allow.  It really doesn’t go anywhere.  The best bit is probably the triumphal Morris dance that Cuddy performs after he rather implausibly kills Frank in a fight.

Meanwhile our infernal friend and Elizabeth develop an interesting relationship based around her unwillingness to commit to the standard soul sale terms and his attraction to her lack of anger at her pretty dire situation in life backed up by an essentially nihilistic world view.  There’s some clever and engaging dialogue here and Cardinal is very effective but in the end all she can manage to offer as a price for her soul is the total destruction of everything so that humanity can start over.  There’s a lot of talk about “hope” but nobody seems to have any.  There is a rather neat coup de theâtre where this total destruction seems to be happening and which would make a pretty decent ending but, bizarrely, our Junior Tempter reappears in what is apparently an interview with HR to ask for leave of absence to consider his future career plans.  “Bathos” is not nearly a strong enough word.

It’s not all awful.  Cardinal, as mentioned is excellent and Eddie does get some good one liners.  The other characters try hard and Barnet is actually a pretty decent morris dancer but they have so little to work with.  The lighting (Jareth Li) is effective, especially for the scene transitions, but the sound design is incongruous and very loud.  In the end it feels like two pieces roughly sewn together for no good reason and only one of those is of any interest, which makes for a pretty long hour and three-quarters.

Witch continues at Soulpepper until March 1st.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz