Bog Body by Itchy Feet Theatre at Arches Lane Theatre Review
Written by Paris for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
When I watched Bog Body, I wasn’t expecting to find such a short piece —just forty-five minutes— that felt so layered and complete. Young adult in tone yet quietly mature in its emotional insight, it stayed with me long after it ended. With strange tenderness, it explores themes that are difficult to even name — eroticism, grief, denial, obsession, devotion. And like all great gothic tales, it does so with a knowing sense of discomfort. This is a play that understands the allure of the unknown and how some people cling to mystery in order to avoid the truth.
Written and directed by Jen Tucker, and produced by Itchy Feet Theatre, Bog Body is a solo show performed by the captivating Maddie White. She plays Petra, a young woman who has fallen in love—or perhaps in obsession—with a bog body she discovered in a museum. What unfolds is an intense, confessional monologue, laced with awkward interactions, dreamlike movement, and moments of humour so strange they almost feel like warnings. Petra talks with her therapist, with her recently deceased twin sister, and about the silent, ancient body that consumes her every thought.
White is magnetic. She shifts from excitement to sadness, awkward charm to eerie ritual, without ever losing hold of the story’s emotional thread. Her performance is a huge reason the show feels so fully formed—she’s a powerhouse, drawing the audience in with intimacy and volatility in equal measure. Her connection to the audience is awkward in the best way: it unsettles, amuses, and then breaks your heart.
Tucker’s writing is sharp, honest, and emotional. She understands pacing —never letting any beat linger too long— and her direction avoids excess, allowing the script and performance to breathe. With Beth Scott on lighting and stage management, the production design remains simple but haunting. The lighting shifts—warm to cold, familiar to uncanny—mirror Petra’s descent into obsession. Her wedding dress and black boots are a striking visual metaphor: absurd romance clashing with something darker, heavier, earthbound.
What makes Bog Body so emotionally resonant is the way it uses Petra’s obsession as a metaphor for grief avoidance. The man in the bog—his face, his mystery—gives her something to fixate on, something unknowable. Because if the mystery remains, so does the longing. And longing, unlike love, doesn’t require closure. We learn that Petra lost her twin sister, a death that is concrete and inescapable. Unlike the bog man, there’s no speculation to hold onto. No mythology to romanticise. Just grief, waiting. And Petra chooses mystery instead.
There’s something beautifully intelligent in how the play explores this—how eroticism is sustained by unanswered questions, how love dies the moment mystery is replaced by clarity. Petra chooses the bog body precisely because he can never reject her, never change, never disappoint. It's a kind of emotional purgatory. And from within it, she constructs her ultimate escape: to live entirely inside this tragic, unconsummated, unresolvable love. That’s where the gothic tone feels most earned—not in stylisation, but in the psychological truth of it.
Still, there are moments where the show slightly falters. Some emotional beats—particularly around Petra’s sister and therapist—risk feeling stereotypical, almost too obvious in their portrayal of “madness.” While beautifully acted, her fixation is so deeply personal, so locked in a private mythos, that it occasionally resists emotional identification. The piece leaves little space to explore the grief she is refusing—it races toward self-destruction without pausing long enough to let us feel the weight of the choice. There is also something missing from the tone: in classic gothic stories, beauty is never absent, even in decay. Love, death, and obsession are often rendered with lushness, romance, and strange allure. Bog Body never quite indulges in that balance. It feels the need to remind us—again and again—that Petra is not okay, that her love is madness. Even though the writing tries hard to ground her, we are left observing, not empathising. We watch a descent, but one that could never be ours.
In the end, though, this is a work that feels honest, crafted, and truly felt. Bog Body draws from classic gothic themes—death, desire, decay—but filters them through a uniquely contemporary emotional lens. It’s not just a story of obsession, but a meditation on how we delay mourning, how we mythologise the dead to avoid letting them go.
In just forty-five minutes, Bog Body manages what many full-length productions usually struggle with: it creates a complete world and a psychologically complex character whose pain is honest and specific. Itchy Feet Theatre, Jen Tucker, and Maddie White have delivered something quietly devastating, tender, and emotionally intelligent. It deserves to be seen and remembered.
Bog Body performed at Arches Lane Theatre at 29&30 May 2025
★★★★
