The Woman In Black, Dir Robin Herford, Truro

The matinee performance fills 850 seats in the theatre with almost exclusively school trips for GCSE sufferers and a smattering of unsuspecting individuals who each look somewhat crestfallen to be confronted with a venue full of over-excited young people released from the confines of the classroom for an afternoon, some of whom have never been out of their own localities into the city. They shove and giggle and squeal and, most delightful of all, every time they are frightened they scream with the effect of a Mexican wave, started off by one pre-emptive female and taken up in relay throughout the entire auditorium. This prolonged screaming is followed by a similar wave of laughter which relieves the tension in the dark. There is a significant element of heightened drama here, and it’s not on the stage.

On stage, however, the performance is robust and engaging, led by Dominic Marsh, a tall, impassioned thesp who delivers his lines with force, clarity and precision. Michael Burrell plays the older man who has engaged the services of said thesp to help him tell the story of an experience he had when a young man, so they both act out the drama with Burrell constantly switching characters in order to be all the people in his story, which is very entertaining.

This is an interesting adaptation by Stephen Mallatratt of Susan Hill's ghost story, now in its nineteenth year, The woman in black appears occasionally, which causes the screaming, but does not appear on stage to take a bow, so perhaps she was never there. You know what is said about theatres.

Comments

ACCATONE! Dir Piers Paulo Pasolini. 1961

Accatone! (1961) is the first film by director Piers Paulo Pasolini and re-relased as part of a box set of his work. Accatone! features a pitiless, self-serving, manipulative young pimp living in the slums and rubble of Rome, whose lassitude is infectious. Images of his death recur throughout the film and he seems barely living. The exclamation mark in the title may be there to try and wake him up. Pasolini shot the film on the streets, using the people he found there rather than professional actors. The effect is a slow moving realism which casts the viewer as reluctant voyeur; it is impossible to gain any distance from the unrelenting sadism of hollow machismo. Seeing this film fifty years after it was made, the misogyny in this film is deeply disturbing; women are either Madonna, virgin or whore. Accatone says prostitution is ‘a mother’s situation’ which provides the mixed message that it’s selfless and necessary for survival, yet he and his friends view whores as trash; to...

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. Dir Mike Leigh. 2008

Simple, retarded asthmatic gasps and giggles her way through this nonsensical film from Mike Leigh. 30 year old Poppy’s arrested development is masked by her carer who provides meals and stability. This form of care in the community works well so that Poppy is able to extend her adolescence in this flat-sharing arrangement by climbing into bed with her carer and exhibiting teenage tactile behaviour. Her flatmate is tolerant, even when getting no answers as to where Poppy has been and whether or not she’s ok. To Poppy’s credit she holds down a job. Inconceivably a primary school teacher, she is left in a position of responsibility with young children for long periods without supervision. However, classroom activities are restricted to making masks out of brown paper bags in case anyone thought primary school teaching involved real work. Leigh raises the possibility of serious subject matter when a boy begins to bully others. Without parental involvement, a Socia...

GLORIOUS 39. Dir Stephen Poliakoff. 2009

Glorious 39 strips away illusions. Poliakoff presents the apparent idyll of an English aristocratic family headed by genteel patriarch Lord Keyes (Bill Nighy). He presides over a country estate in Norfolk and his elegant townhouse in London – a world of golden light, romantic ruins, servants, house parties and happy children. But this is 1939, a mere 21 years since the Great War, the war to end all wars, in which millions died, Britain was crippled with war debt, and the English country house system which he so values was almost annihilated. There are many references to the ancientness of his family and tradition, but now, few male servants remained alive or unmaimed to work the English landscape or to be in service to the old families. Fearing domestic and political upheaval, appeasers such as Keyes sought to prevent Churchill leading the country and taking Britan to war, and to buy off Hitler to preserve British cultural and national identity. Nighty is excellent, contro...

Just For Lookin' Thru

Search This Blog