Gunter
This enjoyably feral offering from all-female, historian-led theatre company Dirty Hare is a very unconventional dramatisation of a very specific historical incident: the strange, lurid tale of Anne Gunter. In 1604, during the early reign of the occult-obsessed James I, Alice’s dad Brian Gunter – the richest man in his Oxfordshire village – killed the two sons of local woman Elizabeth Gregory, understandably igniting a feud between the families. Later, Anne grew sick – or (it’s implied here) she just had heavy periods that Brian seized upon as evidence of witchcraft on behalf of Elizabeth, who was (understandably tbf) poisoning the community against him. What is indisputable is that he turned to the courts in an effort to get Elizabeth prosecuted for witchcraft, something he pursued so aggressively that it ended up being put before the king himself. Hence, there remains a lot of documentary evidence for the case, despite its extreme age. There probably is a conventional historical drama in all this, but that’s definitely not what Dirty Hare have crafted, something you can probably surmise from the company makeup. ‘Gunter’ is devised by the core Dirty Hare team of director Rachel Lemon, actor Julia Grogan (she plays Elizabeth) and Lydia Higman who is – gloriously! – a historian and multi-instrumentalist. Supplemented by two further actors – Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Norah Lopez Holden play Brian and Anne – ‘Gunter’ is essentially a wild piece of gig theatre. It’s full of gags