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.

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