London Horror Festival 2019 Archives - Page 2 of 5

Go to Hell!

Pleasance Theatre

Reviewed – 23rd October 2019

★★★★

“Ronald and Henty rework and polish this stuff like the master craftsmen they are“

Go To Hell! presented by The Electric Head, is a satirical reworking of Dante’s Inferno. Playing for one night at the Pleasance Theatre in Islington as part of the 2019 London Horror Festival, it attracted a full house of fans who like their terror with a lot of laughs on the side. Billed as a “Live Radio Show,” the stage was set up as a show about to be recorded, with microphones and an impressive sound effects desk. The audience’s enjoyment throughout this entertaining show was genuine and hearty—no need for canned laughter at this event.

Cy Henty and Al Ronald are the writers and creative team behind this feast of fear and fun, and they met, appropriately enough, while filming KillerKiller. Go To Hell! is a script they’ve been working on for several years. In this production, Ronald directs and takes on the role of Dante’s stand in as the naively positive Karloff, whilst Henty takes on a number of roles including the diabolical Scrote. Together with Paul Battin as the Narrator, these three make a terrific team on stage, very ably assisted by the skills of sound and special effects guy Marc Lubienski-Steele.

Henty and Ronald’s version of Dante follows the Italian poet’s path through Hell pretty faithfully, but what sets this version apart from its medieval source, is that Ronald and Henty have reimagined the events in the context of the twentieth first, rather than the fourteenth, century. So they imagine a Britain where the NHS has been privatised, and where those well enough to be discharged from hospital must work in a pharmaceutical corporation to pay off their medical debts. Cue lots of evil laughter from CEO Scrote bent on driving his hapless employees to madness or worse. Ultimately the joke is on him, of course, as Henty’s Karloff finds something good in even the most horrific of situations. He counters Scrote’s vision of corporate servitude with his own vision of a world devoted to love and art. Without giving away the ending, let’s just say that there are a number of hellbent downsides to both visions, and these play out to hilarious effect.

Go To Hell! does not just borrow from Dante, however. It borrows from classic radio shows as well. There are ironic advertisements to begin (shades of Prairie Home Companion), and fans of 70s radio shows will find echoes of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in Paul Battin’s soothing voice. As the Narrator, Battin provides the same kind of calming contrast as The Hitch-hiker’s character The Book did, and he helps provide context while Ronald and Henty delve deep in the comedic insanity of their own journey. There’s also a trace of Arthur Dent in Henty’s often bewildered (though still positive) Karloff as he encounters each new circle of hell—also renamed and reimagined as the Circle of the Consumer; the Circle of the Commuter, to give just a couple of examples—in the same way that Dent struggles to make sense of each new planet that he encounters in The Hitchhiker’s Guide. Go To Hell! may mine its material from several sources, but they are rich veins of content, and Ronald and Henty rework and polish this stuff like the master craftsmen they are.

Go To Hell! is light years away from The Inferno, but this contemporary mashup captures the twenty-first century zeitgeist perfectly, skewering it with pinpoint accuracy.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Go to Hell!

Pleasance Theatre as part of London Horror Festival

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Kill Climate Deniers | ★★★★ | June 2019

It’ll Be Alt-Right On The Night | ★★★★ | September 2019

Midlife Cowboy | ★★★ | September 2019

Anthology | ★★★★★ | October 2019

Murder On The Dance Floor | ★★★ | October 2019

The Accident Did Not Take Place | ★★ | October 2019

The Fetch Wilson | ★★★★ | October 2019

The Hypnotist | ★★½ | October 2019

The Perfect Companion | ★★★★ | October 2019

Children Of The Quorn | ★★★★★ | October 2019

Click here to see our most recent reviews

Children of the Quorn

Pleasance Theatre

Reviewed – 20th October 2019

★★★★★

“Silly but insanely smart at its core”

It’s an age-old question: How do you pass the time while you wait for the dead to show up to your séance? With some sketch comedy, of course! Well, that’s how comedy duo Megan from HR (Ambika Mod and Andrew Shires) approach this situation in their latest production Children of the QuornTM at least.

Armed with a Ouija board and a passion for the paranormal, Ambika and Andrew want to contact a spirit. With no initial luck, the pair resort to entertaining themselves and the audience with a series of short sketches ranging from a dance number (with the Devil no less) to questionable dating advice (the Yawn, the Stretch, the Kill and the I’ll Never Tell). Quick-paced with writing as smart as it is funny, Children of the Quorn will leave you stunned that no one has ever thought to do a play with such a premise before.

The play begins with a look at its end. Ambika cleans up a stage littered with paper money and overturned furniture and Andrew walks around on stage brandishing a hammer while wearing devil horns and a blood-stained shirt. After discussing the success of their latest séance, the duo walk off stage, boom ‘one hour earlier’ from behind the curtain and show the audience how such a chaotic scene unfolded.

Ambika’s dead-pan delivery and Andrew’s upbeat quirkiness complement each other perfectly and it is a joy to witness them banter on stage. Their awkward and bumbling style means that it is often unclear what is scripted and what is improvised. Their back and forth feels so organic and the audience can’t help but laugh along with two friends having this much fun.

Despite all the fun and silliness, Ambika and Andrew remind us not to get too comfortable. They claim that to really understand this show, you must pay attention, and right they are. Jokes and sketches veer off course time and time again resulting in the pair looking at the audience with pity and explaining how stupid their assumptions about the given scene were. The audience never knows what’s going to come next and this is Children of the QuornTM’s greatest strength.

The staging is simple, but this adds to the production’s charm. Three chairs (one of which rests the Ouija board and a bell that the ghost will ring) and a table are the extent of the set. There are some props – a guitar, some books – but most of the sketches embrace the lack of extra frills. One particularly funny sketch pokes fun at the limitations of being a double act as Ambika serves soup to 100 guests all of which Andrew plays. Another highlight is Andrew running off and on stage pretending to be five different people at once which leads Ambika to sit down to endure the wait.

Both Ambika and Andrew know just how long to keep a joke going and there are some wonderful moments of self-awareness: “You may be asking: Does this joke warrant two sketches?” “No, no it doesn’t.” “But is it our best sketch?” “Yes.” The play’s fast pace also prevents any joke or bit getting stale, and there are great references to earlier sketches throughout.

Children of the QuornTM is a real treat and there is no way the audience won’t leave smiling. Silly but insanely smart at its core, Megan from HR is a group who will no doubt continue to take the fringe stage by storm.

Pleasance Theatre

Reviewed – 23rd October 2019

★★★★

“Ronald and Henty rework and polish this stuff like the master craftsmen they are“

Go To Hell! is light years away from The Inferno, but this contemporary mashup captures the twenty-first century zeitgeist perfectly, skewering it with pinpoint accuracy.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Go to Hell!

Pleasance Theatre as part of London Horror Festival

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Pleasance Theatre

Reviewed – 20th October 2019

★★★★★

“Silly but insanely smart at its core”

Children of the QuornTM is a real treat and there is no way the audience won’t leave smiling. Silly but insanely smart at its core, Megan from HR is a group who will no doubt continue to take the fringe stage by storm.

Reviewed by Flora Doble

Children of the Quorn

Pleasance Theatre as part of London Horror Festival

Previously reviewed at this venue: