The play is based on various anonymous Victorian texts. Maria Marten was born in Suffolk in 1801. There she met William Corder by whom she had a child who died in infancy. In 1827, Corder murdered Maria and buried her body in the Red Barn. Because of his wife’s recurring dream, Thomas Marten searched the barn and discovered the body of his daughter. Corder was convicted of the crime and in 1828 executed at Bury Gaol. The fact that the production gets unsullied, hearty fun from these macabre ingredients is proof of its sureness of its energy that pushes aside any attempt to think seriously about the horrors.