Carnival of Crows
The Vaults
Reviewed – 13th February 2019
★★★★
“just the kind of gem of a production you always hope to find at a fringe festival”
A one-woman play set in a carnival just seems like an insurmountable challenge, made all the more difficult in such an intimate space as the Cavern in The Vaults. There are no circus acrobats, no bright flashing lights, no amusement rides. In fact, the stage is nearly bare, and Molly Beth Morossa appears wearing only a plain, though filthy, petticoat, with a pocket full of black feathers.
Young Poppy begins by telling the story of how she and Virginia came to meet Edward: The Laudanum sisters, as they would later be known, were living barefoot under a bridge, fighting over a corpse’s shoes when they were happened upon by carnival showman, Edward B. Friday. He resolved their squabble by finding a second shoed corpse, and from then on, they became a sort of family – “bound together with love and hate and need and spite. Like a real family.”
Poppy’s child-like excitement for Edward’s bloody carnival is infectious, and even as she describes the most gruesome acts, the audience is rooting for her dream of one day taking to the stage herself. The story is macabre in the extreme, but Morossa’s comic timing is enduring: even in moments where it seems the play has taken a nose-dive in to an inescapable tragedy, she wrenches a convulsive laugh from the audience. Not to sell her short though, she also creates moments of tenderness, and at one point, of genuinely terrifying menace. It is no surprise that Morossa is actor, writer and director all rolled in to one – it would take that kind of investment in a part to deliver that kind of performance.
There is no excess in this production – every element is used sparingly and to great effect: the set consists only of a frame draped in black cloth and a string of fairy lights; there are occasional snippets of carnival music but the soundtrack’s main feature is an intermittent children’s story-style narrator. This sometimes acts as relief for the almost too-gory details, and sometimes adds to the horror with its unflinching tone. Lighting is equally simple yet effective – long shadows dancing either side of Morossa on the old brick tunnel walls serve as a strange, ghost-like chorus.
The bare brick walls, and trains thumping rhythmically overhead come with the space, but seem particularly apt for this spine-chilling story; it feels almost like an immersive experience. In fact, I would go so far as to say it would be near impossible to reconstruct this atmosphere in a more traditional theatre set-up. This is just the kind of gem of a production you always hope to find at a fringe festival – Morossa and co-creator Celyn Ebenezer have achieved something that the West End, with all its high production value, would be hard-pushed to create.
Reviewed by Miriam Sallon
Carnival of Crows
Part of VAULT Festival 2019
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