FringeReview Scotland 2026
Rope and Flame
Dragonfly Theatre Productions
Genre: New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Duns Volunteer Hall
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
Rope and Flame, part of DunsPlayFest 2026, tells the true historical tale of a town gripped by fear, where whispers become verdicts, neighbours become accusers and faith becomes fire. Ring any bells?
Review
DunsPlayFest’s Volunteer Hall is packed to the gunnels and beyond with good folk from the town and its surrounds, gathering in eager expectation of a show promising vengeance and blood letting in equal measure. No, not an open meeting of Scottish Borders Council but Rope and Flame, a community based theatre production that’s the brainchild of director/writers Clare Prenton, Anita John and Vivien Reid, with a major nod required in the direction of historian Mary Craig, whose book Borders Witch Hunt laid the foundation for the script and whose excellent and informative talk on the Peebles witch trials preceded this performance.
As the seemingly unending cast stream slowly on stage, it appears we’re in modern day Peebles, now a prosperous Scottish Borders town, a complete contrast to the conditions pervading in the early part of the 17th century, with its pressures of famine, religious upheaval, and the reach of Edinburgh’s legal machinery.
Back then, Peebles was rife with accusations of witchcraft and other nefarious ills, accusations that spread like a modern day wildfire through the community, destroying reputations, families and much, much more. Fast forward to 2022, and the town decided to honour those wrongly accused, convicted and murdered on the basis of gossip and supposition, erecting a monument to the forty or so people who so tragically lost their lives.
Forgiveness has, arguably, been a long time coming but the trio of writers believe that both accusers and accused deserve to be understood as people, hence the weaving of this intriguing tale, albeit with a good dollop of fictional reimagining. And the writing spares no effort in pushing back against the framing of female fear and coercion as irrational, exposing how 15-year-old Issobel Haddock was pressured into naming, shaming and, by default, condemning the “guilty” to death by rope and flame, strangled by the former, cremated by the latter.
With such a complex tale and a cast the size of a small army, it’s to the credit of all involved in the production that the story flows with reasonable fluency, the use of narration and judicious signposting ensuring that the audience kept up. Well, most of the time.
Ensuring that the cast of over 30 avoided tripping over each other must have involved some creative choreography too, especially given the episodic nature of the piece that involved frequent scene changing in addition to several forays back and forth across the centuries.
A large cast with great variance in terms of acting experience and capability is always going to present a director with a challenge but it all just about held together, despite occasional issues with audibility, enunciation and good old fashioned random bouts of temporary amnesia. But with experienced, well kent actors playing some of the more substantial roles, the tale kept moving, its serious tone alleviated periodically with the odd bit of light relief in what was quite an intense and thought provoking sixty minutes.
However, there was one stand out performance, that of Jasmine Jenkins, as the aforementioned 15 year old Issobel Haddock. Jenkins (barely 15 herself) conveyed emotional maturity and dexterity beyond her years in a bravura performance that moved from the vengeful and accusatory to that of guilt-ridden panic and remorse as the realisation of what she had done slowly and inexorably dawned. Compelling characterisation, perfect articulation, the audience hanging on to her every word.
The parallels between the power of 17th century tittle tattle and whisper spreading through its modern equivalent of social media are uncanny – too close, one might suggest, to be ignored. Innocent scapegoats caught in a climate of famine, religious extremism, and central‑state legal pressure. Ring any bells?
It’s a telling piece of theatre connecting a hitherto little known episode in Peebles’ past to societal challenges that, in the light of the growing number of inflammatory situations both at home and abroad, have the potential to generate a similarly gruesome outcome. A story from the past calling on us to build a more understanding and tolerant future.
