Review by Simon Jenner,April 26th 2025
Director Gerry McCrudden has a lot to answer for. Helen Edmundson’s The Heresy of Love requires 16 cast members, a play of two hours 40 minutes modelled on rigid conventions of the Spanish 17th century Golden Age, which in turn take from Shakespeare. And a popular subject: 17th century Mexico. So why isn’t it revived every year? The Heresy of Love is directed by McCrudden at New Venture Theatre, Brighton till May 3rd.
Jeremy Crow. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
It’s the story of Sor Juana de la Cruz (1651-1695) once one of the world’s most celebrated intellectuals. Edmundson’s adaptations are so renowned – Small Island being just the most prominent – that it occasionally obscures her greatest strength as an original playwright. Invoking a classic convention she pipped Mike Bartlett to his 2014 blank-verse drama Charles III. Heresy premiered at the RSC in 2012, and was then revived at the Globe in 2015 where serious memorably contrasted with Globe-style slapstick, heightening the convention’s contrasts. McCrudden and his team revert to the RSC’s sobriety and rescue a few lines cut from the revised edition.
McCrudden of course knows exactly what he’s doing; and this three-months-rehearsed, ambitious play with its highly stylised language is a devil and divine to get right. The devil in the detail yields the easiest rewards; devils here delight in it.
Sarah Davies leads as Sister Juana, the nun threatened with the Inquisition, seen as the first literary genius of the Spanish Americas. Secular poet, comedic playwright, classical scholar, philosopher, composer, mathematician, possessor of over 4,000 volumes, correspondent with Newton and more or less court intellectual, she became the Mexican Tenth Muse. Davies radiates confidence: never vehement, she possess stillness. Indeed a formal measure infuses the play. Convention requires long speeches. They’re riveting. There’s not a moment to nod here.
Sarah Davies and Diane Robinson. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
Set 1694-95 the appointment of a new archbishop Aguiar y Seijas (a gravelly, superbly contained flash of mysogyny in Bill Griffiths) upsets ambitious, instinctually-liberal but Machiavellian Bishop Santa Cruz (Jeremy Crow). Crow’s voice delights in swoops of confidence, balm, asides of lust and fourth-wall cackles into further action. Seijas spells the end of a more liberal Mexico, at least for the time being. Crow moves like a bishop; in diagonals. Whereas Griffiths roots like a king. One who’s never heard of checkmate but will overturn the board.
Juana’s protected by the Vicereine, (a warm, confiding Diane Robinson) but when they finally withdraw to Spain Juana is beleaguered. She thinks Santa Cruz is her salvation, and so he thinks too – till a jealous nun Sebastiana (Janice Jones, a slide-eyed serving of malice and blandishments) sows the destruction of Juana’s niece Angelica (an ardent and physically liberated Joanna-Joy Salter, refreshing the whole tableau) through court philanderer Don Hernando (Chris Phipps, cheerfully sending up his Don Juan-ishness). Through this Sebastiana might strike at Juana herself, alleging Juana’s confessed intimacy with Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz exacts revenge with appropriate weapons. Partial to liberal emanations of the spirit, he never realizes he’s been duped by a pseudo-visionary. Juana’s only consolation is the preservation of her works, undertaken by the Vicereine, but will it be too late? Finally she faces Seijas.
Simon Glazier’s clean-swept Upstairs set extends a stage-right wall for exit and entrance: there’s a bottle-green backdrop, a cross, chairs, writing-desk, bookshelf, also stage-right. The coup’s a central window-frame as from a convent filled with projections of monastery apertures: stained-glass, pierced-plain, grand courtyard vistas, dim views obscured by torrential rain; all beautifully-shot by Strat Mastoris, Tamsin Mastoris, Carrie Hynds, Alistair Lock. Strat Mastoris’ lighting does the rest, playing deftly against different windows’ brightness. Alistair Lock and Arun S Varghese craft sounds from plainchant to pelting rain. Mary Weaver’s costumes, all subdued ecclesiastical black (bar the prelates’ telling gold and red sashes) suddenly explode with the court: sky-blues, red sashes, velvets and silks straight out of Velasquez.
Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
John Tolputt and Bill Griffiths. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
Sheelagh Baker brings truth to Mother Marguerita: put-upon, sympathetic, protective, sensing disaster. Brigida (Justine Smith) emerges as truculent where Smith minces menace with servile subterfuge. Leah Mooney shines as Juanita, the slave whom Juana frees, and most harrowingly distances herself from – Juanita’s afforded no soliloquies quite deliberately. This after the enigmatic Juana, whom Davies portrays with both firmness and subjection collapses to self-abnegation beyond what even the Church might sanction.
Juana’s sometime Confessor Antonio, who vacillates in saving her, is achingly treated by John Tolputt, who invests every line with humanity, havering doubt with a troubled frailty that haunts you.
Smaller parts are taken by Simon Messingham as Viceroy fantastically garbed and hilariously vacuous in his one speech; Samantha Howard, Stephanie Prieto (as Nuns), Ollie Wilson, a menacing enforcer priest who looms wordlessly like Marc Almond’s menacer in the ‘Tainted Love’ video.
Clearly an ensemble piece one forgets how often the leads aren’t present. This is though Davies’s hour as much as anyone’s: she invests this fine, if not classic play, with as much watchful passion as her distanced part allows. “Where in the Bible does it say that girls cannot be wise?” That’s still unanswered in most religions. A brave undertaking – typical of McCrudden and his teams – and a rare opportunity to see this superb, all-too-topical play.
Photo Credit: Public Domain.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
Production Manager Alison McMillian-Puri
PM Assistant Anne-Marie Harrison
Stage Manager Bryony Weaver
ASMs Gaby Bowring, Anne-Marie Harrison
Set Design Simon Glazier
Set Construction Simon Glazier, George Walter, Leah Mooney, Chris Tew, Dan Tranter
Set Painting Justine Smith, Stephanie Prieto, Annie Sheppard
Costume Design Mary Weaver
Assistant Costume Design Samantha Howard, Jackie Jones
Costume Assistant (Dresser) Tandy Cufley, Natasha Kitcher, George Marshall, Joanna Miller, Johanna O’Shea, Julia Round
Hair & Make-Up Samantha Howard, Asmita Chndorkar
Lighting Design Strat Mastoris
& Lighting Operation Alex Epps & Sabrina Giles
Sound Design Alistair Lock, Arun S Varghese
Sound Operation Carrie Hynds, Chris Dent
Projections Strat Mastoris, Tamsin Mastoris, Carrie Hynds, Alistair Lock
Poster Tamsin & Strat Mastoris
Programme Tamsin Mastoris
Photography Strat Mastoris
Publicity and Social Media Elysa Hyde
Theatre Props Bryony Weaver & Carrie Hynds
Health and Safety Ian Black.
Many thanks to Box Office FOH and Volunteers
Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris