“needs reworking and restructuring for it to have the effect it should”
Oh, where to start…
I will open by stating that The Dead, Live was really not my cup of tea. There were moments that were really enjoyable and began to grip me but these were few and far between; little glimpses of hope for this tragedy.
Daniel Thackeray had many good ideas for this production and I really enjoyed the key themes that the piece began to explore. However, I feel as though the play’s structure was a disservice to the potential of this piece. The way the play began ruined the rest of the performance. It wasn’t just Howard Whittock’s feeble opening and unnaturalistic acting. Whittock really struggled to deliver a convincing performance as Lawrence until he was performing the séance which was when he captivated me.
Personally, I wanted the séance to be the opening of the show because that would have completely changed the effect and impact on us as audience members. For me, the biggest issue with this production was that the writing lends itself to alienate the audience from the beginning. This makes us aware that we are in a theatre watching a performance. This felt very Brechtian in its nature, creating the verfremdungseffekt (or alienation technique) on the audience.
Whilst, I admire the exploration of doing ghost stories using a different structure it really does not work with this genre. Scarier theatre or theatre that aims to tell ghost stories works on heightening the emotions of the audience and immersing them in the world they see before them. This piece achieved the complete opposite making it a bit tedious to watch at times.
P H Fry’s sound design also didn’t help the piece, at times it actually jarred against the action on stage causing us to further distance ourselves. This especially happened when the badly chosen creepy voice came on; it needed to be something different, a bit deeper and more menacing – it did not incite any fear. This makes me question the impact and the effect the director Alex Shepley was aiming for as Fry’s creative collaborator and key visionary for the piece.
What I did enjoy was the casting of Anne Baron as the woman. She did lack a bit of truthfulness in her performance in the séance but she had a really creepy demeanour about her performance that worked really well.
Overall, The Dead, Live was a flavourless production with good parts but really needs reworking and restructuring for it to have the effect it should.
“Lovecraft’s much loved, sombre and dramatic story is delivered with sinister ease”
Currently hosting the London Horror Festival, The Old Red Lion Theatre is the perfect venue for goosebumps inducing events. The organisers have made sure that one is welcomed by a ghoulish array of spooky decorations to set exactly the right chilling tone.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a tale of insanity, a topic that appears in author H P Lovecraft’s works in many forms. The narrator of the story is a young man who went on a journey to the coast around New England to carry out research into his family history. He encountered unimaginable horrors. The town he passed through to avoid expensive train fares seemed to be inhabited by creatures that are not fully human. Nonetheless, he mysteriously survived the adventure.
Adaptated by Jade Allen and Claire Matthews, Hidden Basement Productions’ take on H P Lovecraft’s classic horror novel places the narrator at his house. He seems to be recalling the events of the story while attempting to go about normal activities like, to his terror, getting married.
The play is an absolute gem. Philip North (narrator) and Claire Matthews (everybody else) are a brilliant, incredibly talented duo that delivered Lovecraft’s much loved, sombre and dramatic story with sinister ease. There were many moments when the skilful sound work (Paul Thompson), imaginative props (Harriet Field, Verity Treadwell, Kayla Holroyd) and outstanding acting made the audience jump out of their seats in fear.
If Philip North was portraying the victim of the dreadful experiences, Claire Matthews was the cause of them. Her rough low voice and her terrifying ability to change in an instant from human to monstrous characters added to the feeling of unease and disbelief that are crucial to Lovecraft’s work. The set did not change from the beginning till the end, although the storyline was constantly moving in time and place. The props – candles, a gramophone, an old-fashioned coat hanger which occasionally turned into a man and the nightmarish puppets were all perfectly chosen to reflect this dark storytelling.
Fans of H P Lovecraft must have been over the moon to see such a soulful adaptation of his short story. There is nothing more delightful than the sense of trepidation one has when leaving the theatre after a good horror story. An excellent darkly comic show. What else will the London Horror Festival bring?
