Review: We Dance in Fire, Golden Goose Theatre 

Although the real world already feels full of existential drama, there is nothing I like more than escaping to the theatre for a good apocalypse. One of my favourite plays of 2025 shared this theme. We Dance in Fire is an altogether more polished affair: this highly accomplished first play by writer Joe Judd is so dark as to feel like it’s dripping with blood and so terrifyingly claustrophobic as to conjure the putrid smells of the decaying world outside.  

First, we are introduced to political adviser Sarah (Olivia Baird) as she comes home after a day at work, still dealing with calls from her overbearing boss, the Health Minister. Sarah’s life feels identifiably dominated by the pressures of work but she remains practical, rational and apparently functional. Then her sister Poppy (Hanna Sophia Wright) arrives carrying an injured magpie that dies within minutes. Poppy seems rather less conventional, having enthusiastically embraced a plethora of esoteric beliefs and conspiracy theories that have coalesced around some kind of modern vigilante movement.  

These ideas seem both familiar and abstract, anodyne yet threatening. The crux of these theories seems to be that witches are at the centre of it. So far, so far-fetched. Or is it? This is Judd’s point and the way he develops his drama. What initially appears to be a simple opposition between rational Sarah and credulous Poppy becomes far more complicated as the consequences of everyone’s convictions begin to emerge. 

The dangerous world beyond Sarah’s window (the entire play is composed of one scene in her flat) is sketched skillfully and economically. The polluted city outside is simply called “the Stink”; an unidentified but suspicious group of people become “strays”. There are echoes of climate panic, populism and pandemic contagion but parallels are not laboured and the way the audience can construct that world coloured by their views makes it more realistic and terrifying. 

In an inspired move, Spiky Saul’s direction and design make us, the audience, the outside world that they see through Sarah’s window: we are “the Stink” and, potentially, “the strays”.   

Baird and Wright are superb. Baird gives Sarah a convincing solidity that is gradually tested to destruction, while Wright makes Poppy’s eccentricity entirely believable, her early certainty becoming increasingly painful as she recognises what she has helped unleash. Saqib Bashir’s Jacob (Poppy’s partner) arrives like another fireball of chaotic energy, adding a menacing naivety to proceedings. 

Then Judd tilts the world again with the arrival of the wonderfully named Virtue and Integrity, self-appointed custodians of a new law and order. As Virtue, Jess Taverner is extraordinary, constantly shifting facial expressions and moods while making quietness sinister. Hugo Gregg’s Integrity prowls the room like an animal. They arrive threateningly but depart somewhat timidly and their exact purpose in the narrative feels unresolved – the only misstep in an otherwise virtuosic playscript.   

There isn’t a weak performance here. There is clearly a friendship connection between writer and cast, most having recently graduated from the Oxford School of Drama. Friends they may be, but they are all superbly cast and fiercely talented, never once allowing the rising tension in Judd’s work to wane.  

For a debut play created by such a young company, We Dance in Fire is an astonishingly accomplished piece of theatre. If you can drag yourself away from our real-world woes to see it, you may well learn something really interesting about your role in it, and why this play is so important right now.  

Written by: Joe Judd 
Directed and designed by: Spiky Saul 
Dramaturgy by: Sara Safi 
Produced by: Oliver Judd and Joe Judd 
Costume design by: Hannah Wickham 
Intimacy coordination by: Lexie Woodroof 
Lighting by: Kit Jamieson 
Sound by: Ben Clarke 
Stage management by: Oscar Maddocks 
Set design consultancy by: Lily Booth 
Painting by: Caroline Judd 

We Dance in Fire plays at the Golden Goose Theatre until Saturday 5 September.