Jack MacGregor is an emerging Scottish creator who has a reputation for scripts that explore serious issues. Prophets examines the oppression within religious cults, slowly breaking open the lies and abuses within a small, isolated community, climaxing with the fiery deaths of the congregation and a brief hopeful epilogue.
Performed with efficiency by its two person cast, Prophets traces an investigation driven by a woman’s own history of abuse. While it gradually reveals her motivations through flashbacks and conversations with her boyfriend back at home, her arrival on Saint John, a remote British Overseas Territory in the South Pacific draws her closer to the cult’s leader and his rewriting of the Bible.
Unfortunately, the structure obfuscates her motivation and her confrontation with the leader, while intense, does little more than emphasise the absolute evil of religious manipulation. Beyond making a strong claim that child abuse is wicked, and that it corrupts entire lives, Prophets has little to add to the understanding of the ways in which power can establish itself and by placing the abuse on an isolated island, makes it appear as extraordinary rather than something that is increasingly, and horribly, present in the UK and, depressingly, a political hot topic.
Prophets, Assembly Roxy, until 31 Aug (not 12, 17, 24), 5.45pm