Many of us on the Island have heard of Molly Downer, reputedly the last witch on the Isle of Wight, and writer and director Paul AT Wilson has, he says, been ‘hooked’ on her tale for 35 years: the ‘tale about the failings of humanity, the story of one person against the world and I wanted to tell that very real story.’ The project began life as a straight drama, which I believe would have worked very well – the tale of Molly’s psychological journey against the backdrop of 19^th Century Bembridge is a very powerful one.

This led to the idea of adding music and creating a concept album, which I hope becomes reality as the music created by Olly Fry and David Pudney for Paul’s lyrics is worth listening to and getting to know. From these songs came the musical, and it has to be said that dramatising a story solely through the medium of the music is a very ambitious aim – most musicals use spoken word to create character and plot development, with the songs used to highlight specific aspects or moments. There is a reason for this, especially when original music is used – to convey a story, let alone engage the audience with a character, the lyrics need to be simple, repetitive and understandable on first hearing, with clear diction, opportunity for characterisation from the actor and a variety of pace, tone and emotional content. This is a huge ask for any writer, musician or performer.

Taking on this challenge, and with the exception of a few lines of dialogue at the beginning and end, Molly Downer is told just through the songs, and while the music is lovely, the concentration on the – mainly very good – musical delivery meant that character development and engagement were somewhat lost.

This is a shame as I really wanted to empathise with Molly, who was portrayed charmingly by Natalie De Gruchy. Natalie’s voice is beautiful and her harmonies with Candy Cassidy as Jane were delightful. The warm relationship between Molly and her mother, played by Laura Holme, were brought out by the actors, but there was less development and depth in other relationships, notably the central one between Molly and Jane. It felt like we skipped across the years very quickly as the story covered Molly’s whole life, along with the Calloway/Dawes family: again, historical people who have captured the writer’s interest.

This is a personal view: I love learning about history – particularly local history – through drama, but when real people from our past are presented as named characters, I feel we owe it to their memory to adhere to documented facts, with any additional material woven in for interest and in keeping with known ‘truth’. The show programme lays out most of what is known about the historical woman, but then presents us with a very different Molly – one who forms a loving relationship with Jane Calloway, whose father discovers them together and as a result gives his daughter to fellow smuggler Dickie Dawes to rape and then marry. Dawes then rapes Molly and the two women conspire to poison him. In fact, Jane and Dickie Dawes married and had five children before Molly was born: personally, this conflating of two separate histories jarred with me, but others may well disagree.

What I think nobody would disagree with was the believably villainous portrayal of Dawes by Edward Nash – Ed says ‘I’m not sure he has many redeeming qualities’ and certainly that applied to the character he ably presented. In fact, the show almost turned into Jane’s tragedy as we saw the way she was treated by father and husband, and her early death leaving her young daughter Charlotte to Molly’s care.

There were other beautiful voices and talents onstage too – Ellen Careless sang emotive lyrics about Molly as a young girl, and I would love to have seen some development of this stage of her life; similarly one of the few known relationships, with Harriet who Molly allegedly cursed, could have been developed further, especially as Harriet was played by the singing and acting powerhouse that is Lily Valvona. I would like to have known more about how Molly’s mother before her death viewed her daughter as she grew into a woman, and experienced the hatred of the local population.

The ‘chorus’ actors portrayed several characters who appeared very briefly and I would like to have had the chance to get to know them and their place in Molly’s story in more detail. The story of Molly Downer is a fascinating one, and told by some talented actors and singers, but in the attempt to tell all it lacked focus. That said, the songs were delivered well – I particularly enjoyed the smugglers song where the pace lifted and we were told in rousing chorus how bad these baddies were. If you enjoy listening to original music and seeing a tale unfold, ‘The Molly Downer Musical’ is playing today (Sunday) at Ventnor Fringe.