The trouble with The Croft is that it keeps insisting it has something profound to say. About intergenerational trauma. About repressed women. About ghosts – literal or emotional. But what begins as a dark weekend away quickly sags under the weight of underwritten themes and overworked tropes, ending in an unearned crescendo, greeted by the kind of laughter no thriller wants to hear.
The play follows Laura, who retreats to her late mother’s remote croft with her older lover Suzanne. But their plans for a romantic escape quickly unravel as personal tensions mount and memories begin to stir. The croft becomes a kind of liminal portal, drawing in threads from two other timelines: one set a generation earlier, with Laura’s mother Ruth facing her own reckoning; the other, much further in the past, focuses on Enid, a fiercely independent woman living during the Highland Clearances. These three strands interweave over the course of the play, haunted – sometimes literally – by pain, secrecy and inherited grief.
The Croft premiered in 2020, but was curtailed five weeks into its original tour due to COVID. This revival reunites some of the original cast and creatives, while introducing a new director, cast changes and edits to the script. But the result feels like a patchwork of ideas and intentions, never quite coalescing into something cohesive or compelling.
Laura, played by Gracie Follows, is a difficult protagonist to root for. Her age is never specified, but in this production she comes across as practically teenage – immature, sulky and permanently on edge. That casting decision makes the age gap with Suzanne uncomfortable, and with no evident spark between them, the central relationship feels both unconvincing and strangely asexual. Caroline Harker does a solid job in both of her roles – Laura’s mother Ruth and her girlfriend Suzanne – bringing clarity and differentiation to each. But this only underscores a deeper problem: in both dynamics, Harker feels more maternal than romantic. There’s no chemistry, no warmth, nothing to suggest why these two women are together – let alone why we should care about their getaway.
Follows gives a technically competent performance, but is hamstrung by the writing, which casts Laura as brittle and reactive. She constantly demands vulnerability from others, while offering none herself. It’s a performance that works hard but can’t conceal the fact that Laura is simply not an interesting or likeable character.
The central issue with The Croft is that it never decides what kind of play it wants to be. It flirts with ghost story conventions – flickering lights, sudden bangs, eerie music – but these feel lazy and borrowed rather than earned. The show’s scariest moment drew laughter – not because it cleverly undercut tension, but because it exposed how flimsy the suspense really was. The play gestures towards horror but doesn’t have the nerve to commit to it; it hints at psychological depth but never explores it fully.
The three interwoven timelines are meant to echo one another thematically, but only Ruth and Laura’s stories have any meaningful connection. The historical material surrounding Enid, played with gritty conviction by Liza Goddard, feels remote and underdeveloped – loaded with symbolic potential but given too little stage time to land. We’re asked to believe that the past seeps into the present, but the actual mechanics of that haunting remain vague and unconvincing.
The design elements work hard to elevate the material. Adrian Linford’s set gives the croft a rough, skeletal presence that can shift fluidly across timelines, and Chris Davey’s lighting helps differentiate the decades with effective economy. But these choices feel more like damage control than inspired design – attempts to inject atmosphere into a play that lacks its own pulse.
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There’s ambition here, and moments of clarity in the direction and performances. But overall, The Croft feels like a play that wants to do too much and says too little. Its themes are gestured at rather than explored. Its scares are superficial. And its emotional core – whatever that may be – is lost beneath a tangle of timelines and underpowered writing. There’s the shadow of a better play in here somewhere, but this revival doesn’t seem to trust the material enough to let it speak. Instead, it leans on genre gimmicks and vague symbolism, leaving behind a story that fails to resonate – emotionally or theatrically.
The Croft, presented by Original Theatre, Joshua Beaumont and Huw Allen
Writer: Ali Milles
Original Director: Philip Franks
Director: Alastair Whatley
Associate Director: Nadia Papachronopoulou
Designer: Adrian Linford
Lighting Designer: Chris Davey
Sound Designer and Composer: Max Pappenheim
Cast: Gracie Follows, Liza Goddard, Caroline Harker, Russell Layton, Gray O’Brien, Judith Rae, Simon Roberts, Rheanna Trueman
The Croft will be performed at The Rep until 14 June 2025 before being staged in Guildford, Edinburgh and Liverpool.
