October 24, 2006
A Night At The Grand Guignol, "an evening of ghoulish and forbidden delights" based on a form of theatre popular until the mid-1900s, is made up of four short plays translated by Merton students Tom Richards and Leo Shtutin from original French scripts performed in the "Theatre of Blood" in Paris - plus a fifth set in the present day but in a similar style. It features madwomen, guillotines, quaking virgins, acid-flinging wives, creepy doctors, dodgy nuns, and desperate soldiers, and opened last night at the Old Fire Station to a tiny and sometimes mystified audience.
The mystification was partly because there were technical hitches and timing issues from the beginning - before anyone came on stage we spent an oddly long time staring at an empty spotlight. Still, the first half was carried by mostly excellent and appropriately melodramatic acting, some genuinely horrible moments and a great visual joke reminiscent of The Mighty Boosh (which actually worked all the better due to the clunkiness of the effects, but I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise). The second half worked less well, and in particular the final story lost its impact due to too many set changes slowing it down.
All the same, the actors coped brilliantly in the face of the technical difficulties and the small turnout. The skeletal narrator with his terrible puns was particularly fun (insert quip about "dying on stage" here). I'm sure that given another performance or two, and a chance to iron out the hitches, the full horrors will come across unimpeded.
The mystification was partly because there were technical hitches and timing issues from the beginning - before anyone came on stage we spent an oddly long time staring at an empty spotlight. Still, the first half was carried by mostly excellent and appropriately melodramatic acting, some genuinely horrible moments and a great visual joke reminiscent of The Mighty Boosh (which actually worked all the better due to the clunkiness of the effects, but I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise). The second half worked less well, and in particular the final story lost its impact due to too many set changes slowing it down.
All the same, the actors coped brilliantly in the face of the technical difficulties and the small turnout. The skeletal narrator with his terrible puns was particularly fun (insert quip about "dying on stage" here). I'm sure that given another performance or two, and a chance to iron out the hitches, the full horrors will come across unimpeded.