Reviews ManchesterNational Published 13 December 2021

Review: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart at Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

4 December - 15 January

Devoted to the devil: James Varney invokes David Greig’s midwinter folk story with a crown of sonnets.

James Varney
Joanne Thomson in The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart at ROyal Exchange, THeatre, Manchester. Design, Max Johns; lighting design, Amy Mae. Photo: Johan Persson.

Joanne Thomson in The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart at Royal Exchange, Theatre, Manchester. Design, Max Johns; lighting design, Amy Mae. Photo: Johan Persson.

Why, She Fucked the Devil: neither review nor poem

i

I can only talk of what’s invoked

in The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart,

and in doing that, of course, I show

what ‘winter’ means to me, what ‘Christmas’ is, what

‘verse’ might be. For a story of obsession

(devotion?) Prudencia’s flaw is living too much

apart, binding herself to purity

of a kind her own invention, outwardly

cold but brilliant, unable to touch

the lives of others. The major agitation

of the play is goading her to find

fulfilment in a source un-dead, outside

herself. But know the play is (not the thing)

a single heap of links, a single line: invoking.

ii

A single heap of links. A single line. Invoking

the scam of narrative, we can expect

a lesson from Prudencia’s journey, wherein

the subject which she loves she must reject.

This is a Christian Christmas ghost story;

the dread force which leads our heroine

astray is a chorus of devilish harpies

– representatives of hen dos – a folk practice

Prudencia’s academic preferences have no time for.

Her subject is ‘The topography of Hell’

and karaoke is too crass a pastime to endure.

She flees the bar into the snow-bound night, to find

a library of Hell-literature (!what luck?)

when kidnapped by the Devil, whom she fucks.

iii

When kidnapped by the Devil, whom she fucks

eventually, the play abandons being written in verse.

Prudencia is held captive in the library, and watched

incessantly by the Devil, her host. He keeps her

for thousands of years while she categorises and

catalogues the library of Hell. Her academic

specialisation has become now a manipulative

and abusive relationship, culminating in the two

fucking, and Prudencia realising she needs to leave,

cannot exist without the outside world. Where before

Prudencia was caught for not heeding the folk

cautions of the songs she studies, now she uses

them, and flees on a midwinter’s night,

through a hole in the worlds, and into the snow.

iv

Through a hole in the worlds, and into the snow-

blanketed night she left, met there

by Colin Syme, an emblem of the culture

she disdains – though he saves her, and although

they end paired up together (in the manner

of the Netflix Xmas trash I’m binging

every day). Hell’s all well and good

but Prudencia’s abstract, ungrounded

love for it was poison. I might say, then,

the ‘folk’ of Prudencia Hart is gregarious,

boisterous, anarchistic – a force to open

and connect its subjects – extended to us

in the guise of Lil Nas X’s Montero.

Long as we sing together, it’s folk music now.

v

‘Long as we sing together, it’s folk music now’

is a fine message when everyone has a voice.

Academics’ voices largely are sound

during Prudencia’s journey. The choice

to deliberately present a council-housed mother

as a pure-but-fallen Magdalene,

her fiery death caused by an errant fag-end,

is key to this play’s concept of the othered

working class. The salt-of-the-earth become

symbols quickly. Prudencia was wrong

to be abstract; was she wrong to be a snob?

The common can’t be spoken with, are gone.

I’ve drawn no easy answers in my notes,

I can only talk of what’s invoked.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart runs at Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester until 15 January. More info here.

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James Varney

James is a writer and theatre maker, based in the middle parts of England. He has created work with Daniel Bye, Josh Coates and Lenni Sanders and had work presented at Derby Theatre, The Royal Exchange, Manchester Literature Festival, Live at LICA and Camden People’s Theatre. James enjoys Peanut Butter, DIY Punk and Long Walks On The Beach.

Review: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart at Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester Show Info


Directed by Debbie Hannah

Written by David Greig

Cast includes Lawrence Hodgson-Mullings, Amelia Isaac Jones, Malin Lewis, Joanne Thomson, Paul Tinto, Oliver Wellington

Original Music Michael John McCarthy

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