Coven Tickets

I accuse the company of Coven of witchcraft. From the haunting opening chorus to the final, rousing rally cry, I was utterly transfixed. My temperature dropped and small, raised bumps covered my arms - I was possessed and completely under its spell. This is a warning for witch fearing folk: something extraordinary is brewing at the Kiln Theatre.

A reinterrogation of the Pendle Witch Trials, Coven follows Jenet as she awaits her fate in a tiny prison cell. Two decades ago she condemned her family, now the finger is pointed at her, and no one is listening. As she shares stories with the women around her, Jenet’s faith begins to fracture, and thirteen women rise together to reclaim their power and rewrite the story history tried to burn.

The music is the show’s magic ingredient, gospel-folk threaded with eerie harmonies and battle cries. A single drumbeat reverberates through the room, like a heartbeat awakening something ancient. When the ensemble sings together, they are one entity: fierce, divine, unstoppable. Their chant-like rhythms, driven by handclaps and stomps, feel like a ritual, a summoning of strength that history tried to silence. They have stayed silent, forgotten in history for long enough, they are ready to make some noise.

For all its fury, Coven is also wickedly funny. The all-female cast takes gleeful aim at the all-male institutions that persecuted them; judges, jurors, and clergymen reduced to absurd and clownish caricatures. The doddery judge, calling for the “gentleman and gentleman of the jury,” is met with pompous choruses of “rah rah rah,” and noses in the air.