When Prophecy Fails review – gripping dive into a doomsday cult

Studio theatre, Edinburgh Groupwork’s physical theatre show captures the real story of a midwest mystic from the 50s and the followers she drew, in all their eerie ordinariness In the early 1950s in the American midwest, a woman known by the alias of Marian Keech awoke in the night with the urge to write. But the words that came out weren’t her own: it was the voice of her late father, she was sure. Other voices from the beyond began to use Marian as a conduit, ultimately Jesus Christ himself, which is how Keech came to be at the centre of a doomsday cult of seemingly ordinary citizens convinced the world was about to end, but that they would be rescued by aliens from the planet Clarion. It is such a good story, one that was captured in a landmark social psychology study at the time as well as the book When Prophecy Fails, that you could argue Scottish theatre company Groupwork don’t have a lot to do. But their treatment of the tale is deceptively simple in a very well-crafted show that does no more and no less than it needs to. Much of the narrative plays out in voiceover, in reports from the academics embedded in the group and quotes from the believers, leaving the performe