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Showing posts with label London Horror Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London Horror Festival. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
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Rating: 
There are skulls on sale in the supermarkets, bats hanging from the lamp-posts and jack o' lanterns perched on every doorstep. 'Tis the season for spookiness and I am loving it. Things have been especially fun this year at the London Horror Festival, which has served up frightful delights of all varieties, with Edred, the Vampyre capping things off.
Written by David Pinner, the play tells the story of the titular Edred (Martin Prest), a thousand-year-old vampyre (I feel the spelling is important). Over the course of his long immortality, he's ridden with Genghis Khan, walked the plague-ridden streets of London, fought at the Battle of Hastings and shagged Shakespeare. Now he is in something of a rut, apparently spending his time hanging out at an isolated church in a London suburb.
But tonight he'll have a little more fun than usual. Two teenagers, Jacques and Elizabeth (James Hoyles and Zari Lewis) have heard the rumours of a supernatural presence and decided to investigate. Now they are both in the vampyre's lair, though it seems Edred is happy to hold off his thirst for blood in favour of toying with the pair.
Vampyres (and indeed, vampires) come in a dizzying variety of forms these days, running the gamut from glittering heartthrobs to bestial monstrosities and everything in between. But Edred is a consciously traditional type of vampyre and plays it old school. He's dressed in a black cape, high-collared dress shirt, waistcoat and cravat - looking like h he got his outfit from a fancy dress shop.
Despite looking like the vampire emoji (🧛♂️) come to un-life, he doesn't entirely live up the myth. His fangs are retractable, he quite likes the taste of garlic, doesn't mind sunlight and can quite happily reside in a church without being repulsed by divinity. And if you slam a stake through his heart you'll just annoy him - a very bad idea.
All of which makes him an entertaining presence to spend an hour with. The weary immortal describing his long journey to the present is a well-worn groove for this genre, but there's some neat historical trivia here and Prest performs it well. I particularly liked that Edred turned out to the 'Highgate Vampire' of the early 70s, which has long been one of my favourite London supernatural happenings.
But while Edred - the star attraction - works beautifully, the overarching plot involving Jacques and Elizabeth is a bit wobbly. It turns out that the pair are drawn to Edred for a reason, the nightmares that haunt them aren't random, and there are dark revelations in store. Said revelations are a bit confusingly explained, jumping into some metaphysical afterlife philosophising that I didn't grasp.
Plus, while Elizabeth is a fun character, Jacques is very one-dimensional. Practically every line he delivers contains the words "fuck", "shit" or "crap" - and while I don't have a problem with swearing this quickly becomes repetitive. James Hoyles doesn't have a great deal to work with, but his character is stuck in a single emotional gear for long swathes of the play and the character begins to grate.
I don't want to be overly negative though: if you're in the Halloween mood this is the ideal play. Edred is a well-sketched out and compelling horror creation and I could have spent much longer listening to his loquacious autobiography. I also have a lot of respect for the show not trying to reinvent the wheel: Pinner proves that the traditional gothic vampyre still has bite.
Edred, the Vampyre is at the Old Red Lion until 2nd November. Tickets here.
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating: 
Theatre is populated by playwrights and directors eager to deliver their big statement on the world's woes. Some hit the mark; many fall short. Against that backdrop it's nice to see shows like Fantastic Garlands' Mother Must Die?!, a silly horror farce whose ambition is to entertain for 45 minutes and then skedaddle. It succeeds.
Olivia Thompson and Libby Rodcliffe are Jocasta and Jupiter, twins living a miserable and sheltered existence in a Grey Gardens style dilapidated mansion. We meet them as they're following an oddly precise set of instructions on how to set up the room for their elderly mother's birthday. Neither is particularly happy about the situation: previous birthdays have somehow left Jocasta with one eye and Jupiter without the use of her right arm.
But this year things are going to be different. This year... Mother Must Die?!
Jocasta and Jupiter are determined to bump her off, end their seclusion and join the real world. And really, how hard can it be to shuffle an old and frail woman off the mortal coil? You might be surprised.
Written in collaboration by the company, this is a fast-moving and pleasantly grotesque way to spend the best part of an hour. I loved how enjoyably off-kilter everything feels. Both women are locked into a very odd arrested development, with Jupiter dressing up as a Brownie to try and join in with a troupe and Jocasta engaged in an unrequited love affair with a terrible poet. They dress like children who've broken into their mother's wardrobe while casually discuss murder and various dark goings-on in the recent family history.
Thompson and Rodcliffe play this as a classic double-act, with Jocasta as the straight man and Jupiter as her comic foil. Both women are in perfect sync on stage and elevate the already funny script beyond what's on the page.
The show also provides a nice sense of place. The decaying mansion is mostly left to the imagination, but there's a lot of subtle exposition as to how it looks. For example, it appears to be gradually collapsing into the sea as the cliff beneath crumbles - with the women peering nervously over the cliff edge during the show.
Plus, while I don't want to spoil anything, there's a neat twist at the end.
I wish I could see more plays like Mother Must Die?! Brevity is a quality all-too-rarely found in theatre, and this story gets in, achieves its goal and gets out while the audience is still laughing. Admirable stuff.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Saturday, October 19, 2019
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Spend too long thinking about memory and you'll go crazy. Your past experiences are the foundation of 'you' - all the places you've been, the choices you made and the interactions you had.
But while we have only the faintest idea of how memory works on a neurological level - we know for certain that it's unreliable. You can quite easily be coached into creating false memories and the mind is eager to edit out unpleasantness it would rather not have to deal with. Then there are the many medical conditions that can dramatically affect your memories. Hell, falling off your bike and bonking your head in just the right way can irrevocably change who you are.
Suddenly the foundation on which 'you' stand feels unstable...
This is the existential horror fuelling Hermetic Arts' Anthology, an hour-long show comprising three short stories, written and directed by Chris Lincé and performed by Carrie Thompson (who, for the sake of full disclosure, I know quite well). I had high hopes for the show, having adored their previous shows Unburied and April.
First up is 'Special Sounds', in which we see a typist trapped in a time loop by a sinister tape machine. Next is Wholesale, a Philip K. Dick inspired marketing spiel in which a Silicon Valley wunderkind demonstrates sinister memory-editing technology. Finally, there's The Empty Clock, about a relationship apparently built entirely around forming precious memories with a sinister twist in the tail.
All three explore our interactions with and perceptions of memory. There's the unsettling inertia that comes from watching your life drip away, day by day, in menial drudgery. It's the kind of fear that sees you begin a job as 'the new kid' with big ideas. You blink and look up to find a hollow-eyed, grey-haired reflection in your computer monitor and realise that this is it for you.
It digs deep into the disturbing feeling that comes from piecing through your most treasured memories and realising that reality may differ from your recollections. Was your childhood really a long golden afternoon or was there something awful bristling just under the skin? How much have you been prodded and cajoled into remembering things a certain way: was that your life or the Disney adaptation of it?
Finally, it touches on the way we intentionally curate our experiences for the future, like a squirrel carefully collecting acorns for the winter. Why do we obsessively catalogue our happiness in photographs and videos: is it to give us something to jog our memories or an attempt to prove to ourselves that we're achieving the happiness we goddamn deserve?
All this is communicated through concise and vivid writing that's honestly a little nauseating in how casually good it is. Lincé has an iron grip on pacing and tone, gradually dialling up the tension in each story as we understand what's really happening. This is best demonstrated in Wholesale, where you generally figure out what's about to happen a few seconds before it does. This is rewarding storytelling: respecting the audience's intelligence, invisibly delivering exposition and easily holding everyone's attention. You can hear a pin drop at some of the tenser moments.
Anthology would be good if it were simply a script, but Thompson's delivery elevates it to true excellence. One mark of confident horror is not being afraid to throw a few jokes into the mix, and Thompson makes being funny, entertaining and personable look effortless. Her mime skills during the first story create a complete character simply through body language and facial expressions. Then there's the ability to turn on a dime, moving from chirpy sales pitch to deep creepiness like flicking on and off a light switch.
On top of all that, Anthology is also a deeply impressive bit of stagecraft. Obvious care and attention has been paid to each individual soundscape, as well as a carefully choreographed lighting design that's executed with pinpoint accuracy. On paper Anthology might sound like a simple show: one performer telling three short stories. In practice, it's polished to the point that its simplicity feels weaponised. You cannot look away and there is nowhere to hide
Beyond all that, there's the simple fact that Anthology is genuinely scary. Despite having reviewed a bunch of stuff at the London Horror Festival over the years, most 'horror' plays present their scary elements with a nod and a wink. That's probably because scaring an audience is hard and sincerely trying and failing makes you look silly. But Anthology's full-throated existential horror gives you the chills in a way someone jumping out and yelling 'boo' never could.
Anthology promise "an evening to remember". It is.
Anthology is next at the Brighton Horrorfest on 26th October. Tickets here.
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
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Rating:
It's easy to understand why people get sucked into cults. They provide a steady trickle of validation, long and short-term goals to aim for and the sense that you're part of something. In an atomised, individualistic world this can make all the difference: providing context and purpose. Of course, the downsides come when they empty your bank account, you're slurping down gruel in an isolated work camp and the leaders have started buying Nikes in bulk - but hey, no system is perfect.
ONEOHONE Theatre's CULT, performed as part of the London Horror Festival, captures this dichotomy. This is an interactive show where the audience becomes 'green' members of spiritual group Rise. With rankings themed around colours of the rainbow, we're lead through the session by three high-ranking indigo members. At first, things seem fairly typical, the leaders burble on about personal empowerment and positivity, quizzing audience members on their ambitions and problems they'd like to solve in their lives.
But all too soon you realise that 'Rise' has a twist in the tale (this is part of a horror festival after all). Genre aficionadoes will twig what Rise really is fairly early, but if you're not in the know, the revelations of what they are trying to accomplish should be quite the surprise. But, I'm not going to spoil the twist in my review, as I wouldn't have wanted to know it going in.
What I will say is that ONEOHONE has clearly done their homework. The core of this cheery and cheesy iconography is clearly Scientology, but there's a ramshackle home-made quality to it that makes it slightly more endearing. Similarly, they successfully tap into the way that hierarchical systems within these groups tend to cause conflict, with none-too-subtle nudges towards emptying your pockets into their coffers.
Asia Osborne's direction also captures the hierarchical systems that cults use as control systems. Late in the show, various audience members are selected for promotion from green members to blue. Singling out people for special treatment has a neat psychological impact on the audience, with those chosen beginning to revel in their new status while the rest of us feel cheesed off, wondering what it was about us that made us unworthy.
The cast are also very strong. Eleanor Rushton does a hilariously awkward job of combining high-minded spiritual fulfilment with bureaucratic nudgings toward donations. But her subtly threats pale into comparison with true believers Louise Lee and Maryam Grace, who gently sheer the show towards the horror elements.
It's not all smooth sailing though. For example, there's an underdeveloped subplot about people trying to expose the cult's activities. This provides the meat for the final sequences of the show, but feels artificial in comparison to the vaguely naturalistic 'meeting' we're attending. Similarly, the ending is a slight anticlimax (though that may just be down to who was selected from the audience to appear on stage) though it's certainly a bold way of concluding a show.
A bigger problem is that CULT is an intimate show based around audience interaction and a sense of community, so staging it in the Main House in The Pleasance is a misstep. There are maybe 25-30 audience members in a theatre with a 230 seat capacity - and you really feel that empty space behind you. Plus, the stage is way too big for a show without any set to speak of and four cast members. CULT is an obvious fit for The Pleasance's Stagespace or Downstairs theatres, where closer proximity to the performers and other audience members in a smaller space would pay off dividends.
But, hey, I enjoyed myself, and CULT is a cleverly devised and thought through show. If you are wary of interacting with performers in front of an audience you can simply remove your green band to indicate you want to observe rather than participate. But I'd recommend you keep it on: there's a sense of danger running right through CULT and, just as in real life, you need to be careful you're not getting sucked in too deep.
CULT is at The Pleasance until 16th October 2019. Tickets here.
Friday, October 11, 2019
Friday, October 11, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating: 
The Old Red Lion in Islington is one of my favourite London pubs. It's friendly, has a good selection of beers, nice decor and has a cosy upstairs theatre at which I've seen many plays over the years. I also dig the history of the place: there's a mural in the pub explaining that it was founded in 1415 (though rebuilt in 1899) and that over the years many historical figures of note drank here. It was even featured in a 1736 Hogarth painting!
But a building doesn't get this old without some unpleasantness happening within its walls. Staff members report strange, unexplained noises, objects moving without explanation and there are even ghostly apparitions on the stairs. This is where The Knock Knock Club come in.
The company recently teamed up with professional paranormal investigators to do a full supernatural audit of the building, spending a night in the building exploring each floor. Tonight they present their results in, Last Orders: The Haunting of the Old Red Lion.
The Knock Knock Club are true believer Reece Connolly, sceptic Christopher Keegan and undecided Caroline Buckley. After a quick poll of who in the audience believes in ghosts (at the London Horror Festival it seems silly to say no) we're off.
The show is part storytelling, part lecture. So, we open with Connolly delivering a spooky story by candlelight about a terrifying incident that took place in the very room we're sitting in. Brrr. All three performers can spin a fantastic yarn, and the ones we hear tonight are suitably creepy.
With a set composed simply of a hanging pub sign and frantic red scrawls (blood, knife and so on) on the walls, the show relies on darkness to provide the atmosphere. This works beautifully, especially later in the show when they cover up the green glowing fire escape sign in the corner. I love shows that plunge the audience into pitch darkness, and aside from some brief and dramatic flashes of light, it cranks up the volume of the tales they're telling.
Sadly the paranormal investigation side of the show is less engaging. I'm a sucker for local historical tidbits; so while I knew that Lenin and Stalin once drank at this pub, I didn't know there was a legend about Lenin attempting to hide in the dumb waiter to avoid police. But the thing is, the way the show is structured, I've got no idea if this is true or not.
Last Orders has a real problem here. Obviously as part of the London Horror Festival and a show being put on in the run-up to Halloween it's got to be spooky. If the show's conclusion was that there's actually nothing strange going on in this building at all and that ghosts aren't real, it'd be a big let down. So there's a theatrical incentive to bend the truth or, to put it less kindly, make shit up.
There are parts in the show when they tell you a story about something that happened in this pub, only to admit straight afterwards that it actually didn't happen like that. Full credit to them for honesty, but it means that you're constantly second-guessing whether what you're hearing is actual history, actual recordings from their night in the building or just something to spice up the show.
I can understand why Last Orders is structured like this: it wants to both inform and entertain. But this is ultimately a piece of horror theatre and I wish they'd just leaned firmly towards the latter.
Throughout the show we hear tales of mysterious noises from within the building and objects moving on their own - why not simulate this on stage at unexpected times to freak us out a bit? Hell, why not go all Ghostwatch on us and have the show turn into a genuine paranormal event that the audience is caught up in? I dunno, have someone get possessed on stage during the Ouiji board sequence or something.
As it is, Last Orders is too dry to be scary and too loose with the facts to be informative. The Knock Knock Club are all engaging and charismatic stage presences, but even they cannot disguise that the paranormal content of the show is very thin. And if you're going to exaggerate some parts, why not exaggerate all of it?
Last Orders: The Haunting of the Old Red Lion runs until 26th October. Tickets here.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating:
I've never liked milk. Even before I was aware of the ethical and environmental implications, milk freaked me out. I still remember being handed a miniature bottle of the stuff every day in primary school, it always smelt more rancid than the stuff you'd get in supermarkets and to get to it you had to carve through a thick plug of cream-like substance (possibly cream) with a straw. It was disgusting.
This dislike and suspicion of milk has extended into adulthood. I like my coffee black and if I have cereal it's sitting in delicious coconut milk. Even the scientific description of the milk sounds disgusting: "an emulsion of butterfat globules within a water-based fluid that contains dissolved carbohydrates and protein aggregates." Blegh.
So, when I was invited to kick off the London Horror Festival with DeadPlant Theatre's bizarre-sounding post-apocalyptic dairy comedy The Milkman Cometh, I jumped at the chance. Even if nothing else will horrify me, milk definitely will. Plus, the show had a live score by a band called 'Fuck Slurry', and if I've learned one thing over the years it's that bands with 'Fuck' in their name are almost always worth seeing.
Written by Alice Bounce, Maxwell Tyler and Owen Jenkins, the show takes place in a dairy-free future. With climate change heating up, the world's government blamed it on cows' farts - and decided to incinerate them en masse. This resulted in a gigantic conflagration that turned the world (and especially the UK) all Mad Max. Enter a Liz (Lydia Hourihan) a mysterious woman warrior. Her bike Deirdre has run out of gas in the vicinity of the mysterious village of Cud.
This proves to be just about the worst place she could have broken down. Despite cows being extinct, Cud has a steady supply of milk. It's provided by a mysterious milkman the town worships - but where can be getting this milk? Our woman warrior is about to discover the horrible truth...
Said horrible truth isn't particularly difficult to figure out, but various revelations are impressively twisted and disgusting. The whole show is satisfyingly gross actually: with the way it takes a deep dive into the concept of milk as a bodily fluid successfully turning my stomach more than once. The precise twists and turns of the narrative (which I won't spoil) mean DeadPlant Theatre easily lives up to their sick and surreal reputation.
They're also a finely honed comedy machine. The five-strong cast (Dominic Allen, James Keningale, Alice Bounce and Owen Jenkins) bounce off one another with the rhythm of people who know each other's timings perfectly. They have a collective talent for the intensely grotesque, with the team neatly capturing a The League of Gentlemen-style camp-but-still-terrifying freakshow of stooped backs, squinty eyes and hungry leers. Next to the villagers, Liz makes for a striking heroine, her body language alone making her appear alien when she's in their midset.
And yeah, Fuck Slurry were awesome. I think most plays would be improved by having a beardy metal band at the rear of the stage. Purposefully silly and surreal comedy like this often comes across as affected, but the metal soundtrack provides much-needed grit and texture. It adds to the post-apocalyptic griminess of the piece and sounds great to boot.
The Milkman Cometh also has brevity on its side. It's just an hour long and is all killer no filler. The plot trots along at a quick pace, Katherine Timms' direction is precise and clear, there isn't a redundant minute and every single character is deftly sketched out. I had a whale of a time, with a big smile plastered over my face for most of the show and pursed lips at some of the more genuinely gross-out moments.
I just hope that was water I was sprayed with as the lights went out at the end...
The Milkman Cometh is at The Pleasance until 10th October 2019. Tickets here.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
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Rating:
Apocalypse is in vogue at the moment. From Mad Max: Fury Road to The Walking Dead to Fallout 4, there's a huge audience out there who want to immerse themselves in a ruined world in which desperate survivors struggle to carve out a life after society has collapsed. What does this preoccupation say about the general state of mind? We're buffeted by reports on climate change too scary to process, told with authority that our economy is a wobbly mess and (if you hoover up the garbage that the right wing press put out) you might believe we're under siege from barbarous dark-skinned men from the south.
All of that informs The Fallen Institute's Mister Mushroom. Once upon a time, Little Spewling was the epitome of a picturesque English village, speckled with pubs, community halls, schools and farmlands. That all changed when the nearby nuclear power plant melted down, transforming Little Spewling into toxic, radioactive anarchy.
It seems that there's only one sane man in this anarchy. Holed up in a bunker and subsisting on canned food, he struggles to maintain decorum and civility in a world gone mad. But as the radiation seeps into his home, can he complete his mission of finding 'Bunny' or will he succumb to the madness that's seized the town?
Written by Reece Connolly and performed by Christopher Keegan (also directing), Mister Mushroom is a scuzzy, claustrophobic monologue that revels in making the audience uncomfortable. As it opens on a rather gory piece of self-surgery, and includes to a genuinely wince-inducing dental mishap, I'd say it achieves that particular goal. These shivery moments mean we never get too comfortable in our hero's company, our suspicions about him gradually building as the monologue develops.
Keegan fits the role beautifully: looking creepily ogrish as he squats in his cave picking over the bones of the past and silently hearing the chaos rumbling away above his head. He also builds up a fine head of mania, practically frothing at the mouth in later scenes as his true feelings are revealed.
Unfortunately, much of the potential impact of the piece is torpedoed by the fact that Keegan hasn't memorised his lines. Part of the conceit of the piece is that we're reading this man's manifesto/autobiography, so the character having typed documents around him is appropriate. But the knock-on effects of him constantly referring to the script are numerous. Most obviously, Keegan pretty much has to remain seated at a desk, which severely limits his physical performance. It also makes for occasionally stilted delivery and the constant gazes down at the papers mid-sentence break the character's engagement with the audience.
I'm sure there's a good reason why Keegan doesn't know this by heart - perhaps he stepped in to play the character at late notice or something, but whatever the excuse it genuinely harms the show's flow and overall effectiveness. Maybe this is why a late plunge into complete mad (and a stab at political relevance) isn't half as engaging as it probably should be.
Mister Mushroom is a nice idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired. Perhaps if it was staged and performed with a little more panache it could hit the heights it wants to but right now it feels incomplete.
Mister Mushroom is at the Old Red Lion as part of the London Horror Festival until November 2nd. Tickets here.
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