Writer: Sarah Pearcey
Director: Eleanor Dunlop and Kat Munroe
There is an awful lot going on in Sarah Pearcey’s blood-soaked folk-horror-cum-fairy-tale The Notion of Recompense, kicking off this year’s GrimFest. How it all hangs together, and what the play is getting at, is a trifle hard to figure out.
A witch in a nearby forest turned Elin (Emma Kirrage plays a mean violin) into an owl some years ago. Nobody seems to remember why, but it appears to be tied to a feud between the witch and Elin’s crossbow-carrying father (Timothy Nixon polishes the impressive weapon with near-unstoppable phallic zeal). For equally obscure reasons, the witch has now returned the girl to human form and is set to be burnt at the stake this very evening.
Nobody seems particularly happy that Elin, who eats rats and mice and emits birdcalls, is back. “It’s been weeks, and she’s not said a word to anyone”, complains the girl’s erstwhile friend Madge (Dorothea Jones) to someone called Gertie (Sapphire Stutchbury). Elin says the witch made her happy – “with her I could fly” – and seeks to magically revive the dead enchantress by casting a spell over her bones, so as to return to avian form. Thomas (Kieran Hatchett), who wants to marry Elin and attempts to steal a kiss, thinks the witch-reviving idea is unwise.
Meanwhile, a naked stranger (Alex Guersma) is discovered in the river. The friendly villagers take him in and feed him. Directors Eleanor Dunlop and Kat Munroe deliver a nicely rendered dinner scene evoking Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with the Jesus-like stranger at the centre. The stranger returns their hospitality by criticising their table manners and attempting to rape the ethereal, otherworldly Sorrel (Rachel Thomas), who responds by hacking him to death with an axe, chopping him up into pieces, and burying his head by the river.
Meanwhile, someone called Thaddea (Lauren Ramsden), who may be Madge’s cousin, is pregnant, but the baby unaccountably dies. Someone called Lark (Niamh Euers) is a cackling presence for a while but then disappears, giving rise to the line, “Lark has flown the nest, as it were”. Gertie, who thinks fairy tales “are a load of horse cock”, seemingly dies or at least disappears, payback for disrespecting fairy tales, one supposes. Elin’s father wanders ominously around with the crossbow. Someone else dies, adding to the already substantial body count.
How these events connect, and what story The Notion of Recompense is telling, never really emerges from the ether. The show blurb tells us the piece is about generational trauma, and one takes it at its word. “I wonder what Elin did that was so bad?” someone muses. “She was turned back, the witch bloody died, that should have been the end of it”. Narratively speaking, at least, that is sage advice.
Reviewed on 15 October 2026
