Edinburgh Fringe 2026

Wherefore Art Thou, Woman-Hater?

Acting Speaks Louder

Genre: Dark Comedy, Live Music, Theatre

Venue: theSpace@Surgeons Hall

Festival: Edinburgh Fringe

Low Down

Review

Renaissance like music is tinkling gently in the background as the audience files into the Stephenson Theatre at theSpaceUK’s Surgeons’ Hall, curious to understand just what they’re letting themselves in for.

For Wherefore Art Thou, Woman-Hater? is a rare revival of the 17th Century play, Swetnam the Woman-Hater, an anonymously written, satirical response to Joseph Swetnam’s catchily titled and notoriously misogynist pamphlet The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Forward and Unconstant Women.  And it’s Acting Speaks Louder’s follow up to their debut Fringe show of 2024, Disco Baby? the only thing with which it apparently has anything in common is the writer’s love of interrogation points in titles.

Naturally, all of you Renaissance lovers reading this will know that “wherefore art thou” is oft misinterpreted these days as “where are you”, rather than the correct “why are you”, so you’ll have immediately understood the clever wit inherent in the title itself.  Just wait until the plot starts to unfold.

Now, theatre in the 17th Century was basically an employment scheme, writers creating a multitude of parts to ensure that the burgeoning acting fraternity at least had a chance of putting bread and ale on the table.  Fast forward four centuries and with modern day arts funding ranging from a pittance to flat zero and Fringe venues being smaller than the average broom cupboard, writer/actor (and a few other things besides) Nuala Sankey had to take a more prosaic approach, reducing the original cast of around 40 (30 with words, 10 without) down to, ‘erm, 2, plus the occasional interjection from our tinkling musician.  And an awful lot of silly hats.  Oh, and a couple of swords to allow a bit of dashing and thrashing about.

To describe the original Swetnam plot as labyrinthine does it a major injustice.  To explain it in detail would take longer than watching the average Wagnerian opera.  But here goes.

Two storylines.  Number one is in Sicily, where a king puts his daughter and her secret boyfriend on trial, sparking the old “who’s worse, men or women?” debate.  Number two is Swetnam showing up as “Misogynos”, a cowardly fencing master who’s been bad-mouthing women in the belief that this will make them attractive to him (reverse psychology in overdrive here) and gets dragged before a court of them.  Twice.  The whole thing then neatly resolves, as a prince disguised in Amazon drag helps save the day, the lovers get married, live happily ever after and Misogynos is forced to take back his anti-woman rant in what’s a comic takedown of misogyny.  All delivered with plenty of cross dressing and role-reversal fun, the ultimate irony being, of course, that all the actors would have been, ahem, men, women not being thought worthy of being allowed anywhere near this acting malarky at that time.

Got all that?  Great.  So how did our dynamic duo and the talented tinkler pull this lot off?  In summary, quite brilliantly.  Wherefore Art Thou, Woman-Hater? is an adaptation containing a wealth of witty, clever scripting, inventive staging, stunningly quick scene/character/costume changes, lots of silly hats and a couple of rap fights, all whilst keeping the energy levels at warp factor 11 as the action is compressed into a forty-five minute whirlwind.

The superb, round-vowelled Grace Florence spends quite a lot of her time as Swetnam (or Misogynos, as he has become by this point), but dips in and out of other roles as required with the frenetic Nuala Sankey creating her own personality crisis by performing a myriad of roles, displaying an extensive range of headgear, accents, voices, mannerisms and physicality in the process.  It’s classic “straight / funny” double act stuff, with the occasional very effective role swap that keeps things fresh.

And one of the many strokes of genius in what is already a darned clever bit of theatre was having music accompany the action pretty much throughout.  Step forward the tinkler himself, Zach Chung, another of those desperately annoying people that just “hears” the music the on-stage action needs a second or two before they need to play it – silent movie skills in our talkie age and no two performances the same.  And, when esoteric sound effects were required, as well as a bit impromptu acting support, Chung steps into the breach.

Ten minutes advance research into the original Swetnam plot will ensure you appreciate the work this troupe has put into extracting a subtly nuanced message for the modern ear.  I’m guessing that quite a few of those present had done that, as they clearly “got it”, judging by their engagement and reaction – hooked throughout, laughter in all the right places, spontaneous applause mid-play on a number of occasions (which nearly caught the cast off guard), generous applause at the end and a marked reluctance to vacate the venue.  The mark of a play that’s “nailed it”.

Modern adaptations of Swetnam the Woman-Hater are like hen’s teeth so it was a very brave decision by this small, fledgling theatre company to collectively develop a relatively obscure and quite complex piece of theatre that’s four centuries old and deliver it as a punchy, modern, relatable lesson that the one thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history – each and every one of the accusations levelled against Misogynos in the 1620 version would stand up against 21st Century equivalents today, many of whom still seem, regrettably, to be tolerated in positions of power.

Acting Speaks Louder have delivered another belter of a show that really merits a “must see” tag for the reasons outlined above. This small, young Cumbrian troupe have a real talent for theatre making with a relevant, relatable message.  Let’s hope they get the chance to develop it further.  Acting really does speak louder.

Published August 21, 2026 by Tim Wilcock