CREAKING SHADOWS. Tour to 21 March.

Tour

CREAKING SHADOWS
devised by Trading Faces

Trading Faces on tour to 21 March 2002
Runs: 1hr 20min No interval

Review: Hazel Brown 7 March at Salisbury Arts Centre

The dark, sinister world of Edgar Allan Poe leaps out from behind the masks.Trading Faces have taken the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe to create a marvellous piece of theatre. Their masks – both full and half-face – never seem to hide facial expressions, lending the eyes and mouths a particular and mobile fascination of their own, and enhancing the body language of the various characters.

Dying in her decrepit, isolated country house, Granny has summoned adored niece Emily and her abhorred husband, Dennis, for the weekend. Granny's obsessed by Edgar Allan Poe and so the young couple have brought her a portrait of the writer as a gift. She even gets Emily to read his poems to her as she falls asleep. Enough to give anyone nightmares, let alone set the spirit of the writer loose in the house to cause havoc and frights galore. The lights fuse, doors and floorboards creak, cats shriek and ravens tap at the door.

Granny is a wonderful character, played with merciless glee by Sarah Beard. Adoring her granddaughter, she does all she can to divide her from the hapless Dennis, whom she studiously ignores, even mischievously consigning them to separate bedrooms. Unable to sleep, Emily comes downstairs and covers herself with the tablecloth – revealing the coffin underneath – and the scariness starts.

Weaving together themes from a heap of Poe's stories, many well-known - Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven, The Oval Portrait, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart - the company has constructed an hilarious and thrilling story that winds you up for the truly terrifying ending. The set is suitably spooky, the music adds to the atmosphere - and seeing the production in a converted Salisburychurch certainly added a frisson or two.

Giovanni Cacciacarro creates both the stick-like ineptitude of Dennis and the sinister majesty of Poe's ghost, whilst Ruth Davies is tender and vulnerable as Emily.

Dennis: Giovanni Cacciacarro
Emily: Ruth Davies
Grandmother: Sarah Beard

Directors:Tony Davies, Thomasina Carlyle
Designer: Philip Engleheart
Lighting Designer: Russ Marquis
Choreography: Marcia Pook
Composer: Nathaniel Reed

2002-03-13 01:22:45