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# REVIEW:Four Thieves Vinegar -lockdown play
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/reviewfour-thieves-vinegar-lockdown-play/
- Published: 2020-09-14T11:30:38.000Z
- Updated: 2020-09-14T14:17:19.000Z
- Description: Brian Butler finds uncomfortable parallels in a Brighton-based lockdown plague play
- Author: Brian Butler
- Tags: Arts, Brighton Fringe, Reviews, Television, Theatre, Rialto Theatre

[![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/050419-four-thieves-vinegar-600400.png)](https://www.gscene.com/arts/theatre/reviewfour-thieves-vinegar-lockdown-play/attachment/050419-four-thieves-vinegar-600400/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)

****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.

[![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/118702862_28517854600400.jpg)](https://www.gscene.com/arts/theatre/reviewfour-thieves-vinegar-lockdown-play/attachment/118702862%5F28517854600400/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)

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.