REVIEW:Four Thieves Vinegar -lockdown play

The Four Tails Theatre Company was founded by veteran Brighton actor/director Margot Jobbins and had award-winning success at The Rialto Theatre during Brighton Fringe 2019 with its darkly humorous tale of the Plague of 1665 – Four Thieves Vinegar.

The company has come together virtually on Zoom in lockdown to produce a 20-odd minute extract from the play which has strong parallels to Covid life in 2020.

Writer Christine Foster, well-known for her work with Rottingdean’s Kipling Festival, has taken a slice of her show, centring on three inmates of Newgate prison at the height of the Plague in London.

Liam Murray Scott is Matthias, an alchemist who believes he has found a cure. His two female  fellow cell mates played by Sorcha Brooks ,  and Char Brockes are a richly drawn trio . Matthias, confident, intelligent and anti-establishment, Sorcha’s  Hannah a worldly wise, thief and crowd-pulling quack doctor; Char’s Jennet a spineless, naive religious follower who turns out to be Hannah’s  daughter.

All three actors, shown side-by side with perfect realism in their dungeon home, give strong and credible performances,  and the read-across to our own predicament is frighteningly realistic. This is a story about despair, hopes for a cure, failed quarantine, mounting illness and death and little hope except in crazy potions and elixirs.

It also lingers on the thought that the powers-that-be may be enforcing lockdown to maintain law and order and prevent rioting and looting.

It’s as strong medicine as Matthia’s barmy liquid gold cure , but intriguing enough to make you want to see the full play again – hopefully after lockdown .

You can catch it below, on YouTube and also folllow Four Tails Theatre Company’s Facebook page.