TURN OF THE SCREW. To 2 April.

Oldham

TURN OF THE SCREW
by Henry James adapted by Jeffery Hatcher

Coliseum Theatre To 2 April 2005
Tue-Thu; Sat 7.30pm Fri 8pm Mat Sat 2.30pm 23 March 2pm no performance 25 March
Audio-described 22 March
BSL Signed16 March
Post-show discussion: 22 March
Pre-show Workshop 23 March 2pm show
Runs 1hr 45min One interval

TICKETS: 0161 624 2829
www.coliseum.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 March

A fine adaptation isn't in the right place on this stage.US/Brit theatre group Moderneyes gave the British premiere of Jeffery Hatcher's 2-person adaptation of Henry James' elusive and psychologically acute ghost story last October at Hampstead's tiny New End Theatre. The actors began as if bound together in the mental claustrophobia that grows around the Governess sent to an Essex mansion by a distant father, who wants no part in his children's upbringing.

Expecting to teach little Flora the governess finds herself also with Miles, the older brother expelled from boarding school for offences unnameable in the 1890s. Miles drags the Governess's affection away from little Flora, giving an inscrutable face to events. Has she seduced you? is the play's first and final question. It's asked of the Governess, whose mental state is up for grabs.

Seduction and corruption run many-layered through the piece. On Oldham's stage openness replaces claustrophobia while Michael Holt's sets of bare stairways and huge implied towers makes the action's darkness visible. Yet it mutes the house's initial attractions. The pleasant greenness, offsetting the subsequent blackness as England's fertility does the bleakness of King Lear, is lost when expressed through images muddily projected on dark walls.

Plentiful space replaces the ever-decreasing psycho-circles which make every room, and even the open-air, fearful places of deception and torment where ghosts seem to play for the children's minds and souls. The staging allows a sense of empty hostility but works against the adaptation's deliberate stylisation, where Ian Targett trebles as man, woman and boy.

Stylistic unease is almost instantly apparent; there's no way this autocratic father would sit on a step as he does here. Yet non-realistic storytelling is an actor-focused style; stage trappings are a distraction. Targett grows in conviction; his camp housekeeper (difficult to cross-play cameos on a main-stage) remains externalised but the adult-player helpfully distances the straight-backed childish exterior and inner secretiveness in Miles.

Alexandra Milman is disappointingly one-noted as the governess, muting the growing, ambiguous horrors of her situation in a production whose advantages (famous, intriguing title, ghost-story, all for the price of 2 actors) seems to have seduced the Coliseum into an ill-fitting choice.

The Woman: Alexandra Milman
The Man: Ian Targett

Director: Robin Herford
Designer: Michael Holt
Lighting: Phil Davies
Sound: Daniel Ogden

2005-03-15 11:28:17