Coven by Rebecca Brewer and Daisy Chute – ★★★★☆
Did you know that only 0.5 percent of recorded history is about women? Coven is a response to that imbalance. Inspired by England’s most infamous witch trials, this new musical from Rebecca Brewer and Grammy winner Daisy Chute refuses to romanticise the past. Instead, it roots the story in a ruthless system of manipulation and control that echoes today. Exposing with care, sincerity, and wit the hypocrisy of patriarchal order.
From its 13-strong all-female cast and on-stage band to its creative team, every element of this production pulses with wisdom, defiance, and the unmistakable magic of a woman’s touch. Evoking the reclamative structure of Six and Hamilton, Coven delivers one show-stopping number after another while fearlessly reframing history and naming the effects of misused power through a sharp feminist lens.
Set designer Jasmine Swan and lighting designer Zeynep Kepekli create a haunting world of decaying concrete and tangled roots: part prison, part graveyard, part memory. Buried beneath the surface await a chorus of imprisoned women. Frances (Shiloh Coke), a pious woman betrayed by her own husband and grieving a loss of child; Nell (Allyson Ava-Brown), a midwife caught in the crossfire; Maggie (Jacinta Whyte), an herbalist; Martha (Penny Layden), a landworker and her pregnant daughter Rose (Lauryn Redding). When Jenet Devise (Gabrielle Brooks), infamous for accusing her family of witchcraft as a child, joins them behind bars, accusations flare and distrust festers. Exposing how deeply internalised misogyny indoctrinates and divides the oppressed.
The women's entwined tragedies unfold over themes of class and faith through folk, blues, and rock-inflected lullabies, work songs, and power ballads that root the production in the rich landscape of working-class womanhood. At times, it feels as though some songs are still being refined, with the ensemble not always as tight as it could be. However, this is a development period, and it does not diminish the masterclass in acting through song delivered by each member of this remarkable company.
Most notable is Gabrielle Brooks, who shakes the theatre’s foundations with her vocals full of rage and remorse, charting Jenet Devise’s transformation from accuser to accused with remarkable precision and raw emotional depth. Her standoffs with Shiloh Coke as Frances in ‘Witch’ and Lauryn Redding as Rose in ‘The Liar and the Thief’ expose nuance within the complex relations between women. Allyson Ava-Brown is both spritely with infectious energy and a grounding force throughout the shifting tone of this production. Commanding the stage with gravitas and warmth, her voice carries the emotional fortitude of generations in the anthem ‘Care’, which centers compassion, community, and women’s right to bodily autonomy. Olivier Award-winning director Miranda Cromwell matches the production’s emotional breadth with physical dynamism. Her pacing of Acts I and II is assured, driving through narratives of scorn, loss, and betrayal while allowing moments of relief through satirical historical travesties, such as Testimony of Edmund Robinson Jr. where Diana Vickers plays a sensational Brittany/Bieber-esque child pop star of early modern Europe; Welcome to the Clergy -1486, and Shit Witches Do.
Photography courtesy of Marc Brenner
“It's not Witchcraft, It’s Healthcare”
Delivered by the midwife Nell, this line crystallises Coven’s most potent message. The production draws direct parallels between environmental justice, the influence of church and state upon a failing healthcare system, women’s rights and bodily autonomy; presenting the earth and the female body as natural phenomena deserving of respect, understanding, and care. Poetic inverses of one another.
Coven exposes that violence has a gender and makes clear that the socially constructed hierarchies established by patriarchy and perpetuated by the entanglement of church and state are an unnatural poison rotting the earth at the detriment of all its living beings. Though the environmental themes could have taken deeper root, particularly around how land is exploited, policed, and commodified, the production remains resonant and deeply impactful. Coven is an extraordinary, galvanising addition to contemporary theatre. Extended until January 2026. Don’t miss it!
★★★★☆
By Kennedy J.L. Jopson
Coven is showing at the Kiln Theatre until 17 January.