Directed by Louisa Hailey, A.C. Gray’s Friends of the God is a modern reimagining of The Bacchae, replacing the vengeful Dionysus with the enigmatic Casey (Maddie Lock), a self-proclaimed god whose arrival sparks a crisis. Stripping away the grandeur of Greek tragedy and bringing its horrors into the messy, repressed present, the play forces its characters – and audience – to confront the terrifying appeal of surrender: whether to faith, desire, or something beyond human understanding.

The play opens with Beatrice (Jamie Prescott), railing against the secular world. Her worldview is rigid, built on moral absolutes. At its core, the play remains true to Euripides’ themes – prophecy, religious ecstasy, and the chaos of repressed desires breaking free. Even the constant drinking of wine nods to the Greek original, where Dionysus is the god of wine and fertility. Here, it serves as a stimulant and a symbol of transformation.

“At its core, the play remains true to Euripides’ themes”

Lock’s Casey, like Dionysus, is dismissed as delusional by men like Joseph (Phoebe Tompkins), who blames drugs and paganism for his supernatural powers. But the women, especially Joseph’s mother Beatrice, are less certain. Slowly, she shifts to quiet fascination. Casey’s words are intrusive, exciting, and unsettling.

Joseph and Beatrice embody two different kinds of repression: his a struggle with sexuality and self-worth, hers a growing awareness that belief is not the same as conviction. Casey’s presence shatters their illusions. Lock is magnetic, balancing the calculated control of a cult leader with the raw unpredictability of something beyond the human. Small movements – twitching fingers, a hunched posture – made her performance eerily compelling.

The second scene shifts to a picnic, where Joseph and his friends, Jack (Fran Morgan) and Elena (Milly Kotecha), grapple with identity and restraint. Tompkins’s Joseph is striking, capturing the anguish of a man torn between repression and desire – neither as strong nor as important as he thinks. His self-discovery is complicated by an unspoken attraction to Casey, who embodies everything he is not: unashamed and free.

“This was a visceral, unsettling production, balancing quiet humor and psychological horror”

By this point, Beatrice herself is becoming drawn to Casey. Prescott is commanding, their strong voice carrying both religious certainty and the agony of doubt. The character’s transformation – from preaching to questioning, confident to desperate – is one of the play’s most compelling arcs.

In the final scenes, Joseph agrees to see the cult from the inside but only under Casey’s conditions. Stripped of his performative masculinity, the production delivers a devastating conclusion.

The climax rests on Beatrice’s brutal confession – a moment of cathartic self-awareness that is emotionally raw and well-delivered by Prescott. It’s an effectively staged reckoning, heightened by Tompkins’s powerful portrayal of Joseph’s breakdown. Begging for death, Joseph takes one of Casey’s potions. As he collapses, Casey’s followers smear blood across their faces – a striking symbol of complicity and triumph. It is unsettling and frightening, yet the strong performances ensure it remains deeply human.

“The staging space of Pembroke New Cellars heightened the atmosphere”

The set was… unusual, for better and worse. A patch of grass at the center and a U-shaped audience arrangement created an intimate, immersive experience but also led to clunky transitions – actors shuffled awkwardly, props were dropped, and at times, the energy lagged, breaking the production’s otherwise fluid momentum.

Mirrors lined the upstage – an interesting but underdeveloped choice. They forced self-consciousness and confrontation, but the word ‘GOD’ scrawled across them felt unnecessary, an overstatement in a play that already made its point. Still, the staging space of Pembroke New Cellars heightened the atmosphere, the venue’s intimacy making every movement and breath feel inescapable.

This was a visceral, unsettling production, balancing quiet humor and psychological horror through skilful direction and strong performances. Not every design choice landed, but the overall effect was haunting. The play leaves things deliberately unresolved. What makes Casey so irresistible? The drugs, the androgynous confidence, or the magnetism of someone who simply seems to know? Are we meant to feel cheated that we never fully understand, or is that uncertainty the point? Perhaps that is what makes faith, in all its forms, so terrifying.

‘Friends of the God’ is showing at Pembroke New Cellars from Wednesday 12 until Saturday 15 March, at 9:30pm.

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