PLAY REVIEW: Bog Witch ★★★★

Bryony Kimmings has long blurred the line between autobiography and performance art, and Bog Witch, her latest solo outing at Soho Theatre, continues that tradition with both fury and finesse. A show steeped in mud and metaphor, it finds Kimmings crawling out of the swamp of midlife, motherhood and mental fatigue to reassert her place as one of theatre’s most fearless truth-tellers.

The set, a fetid marsh of reeds, puddles and discarded glitter, becomes a living organism through which Kimmings stomps, wails and jokes. The imagery is rich, the tone oscillating between grotesque cabaret and eco-gothic mythmaking. Kimmings’ trademark confessional humour remains, but here it’s sharper, darker, and laced with a knowing exhaustion.

There are songs, video interludes and direct-to-camera monologues, all woven into a loose narrative about loss, rage and rebirth. At times the structure feels diffuse, ideas sinking into the bog before they’ve fully formed, but the emotional precision never wavers.

What elevates Bog Witch is its refusal to tidy itself up. It’s messy, funny and defiantly alive; a portrait of an artist still wrestling with the world and her own reflection. By its close, as Kimmings stands, drenched and defiant, it feels less like a performance and more like an exorcism.

A murky, mesmerising return from a singular theatre-maker who continues to thrive in the dirt.