Batty

Batty comes to The Warehouse In Holbeck on Friday 23 October, a new production from Victoria Firth & Company. It follows a character who dreams of running barefoot, wild swimming and talking to trees and strange animals, and who starts to wonder if she might be a witch. She's joined by her companion, Wildthing, as they explore the magic and power of ageing, and the show asks whether the wildness of women should be read as madness or as something else entirely.

It's the kind of piece that works its way through gossip, stories and themes of identity and transformation to show how a feral side can reconnect us to ourselves and to our environment. The focus stays on that tension between how a woman's wildness is often framed from the outside and how it feels from the inside, with the character's drift towards the natural world—the barefoot running, the wild swimming—serving as the starting point for the whole thing.

Critics have been kind to it so far. The Scotsman called it 'sincere, frequently funny and a reminder that there is much more to mid-life than hot flushes', and SheffHerd described it as 'a bold, funny, and poignant exploration of identity, transformation, and wildness'. Between the two, the word 'funny' comes up twice, so it's not all heavy lifting—there's a good bit of humour running through it.

It runs from 19:30 to 21:00 at The Warehouse In Holbeck, Crosby Street, Holbeck, Leeds LS11 9RQ, and tickets are £0.00.