Left - The Tell-Tale Heart. Cover - Chocolate Curses. Cover photo by Jean-Marie MelanieThe promotional poster is sure to, ah, rope you in. This is the second season of the late-night Theatre Of Blood (no, it's not a biography of the ALP), at Newtown Theatre, which is dingy, dark and dangerous in just the right measure. The company sets the scene, scarily, with its web blurb. It’s almost witching hour in south Newtown, and you’re walking down the seedy end of King Street. Every second shopfront is boarded up; windows broken; old posters peeling away from the walls. In the distance, gothic spires penetrate the silvery night sky; the clanking of a late-night train pounds closer and closer. A gust of wind wisps its way around your neck, sending a chill down your spine. As you walk through the skeletons of two trees by a run-down apartment block, you notice every window and every door is barred tight. Graffiti on the pavement announces this as Ghost Valley. Suddenly, a dimly-lit sidestreet comes into view. And there it is. Amongst the lit-up brothels and the closed-up shops, you see the sign. A couple of steps down the alley and you are greeted by a darkened stairwell. Through the doors and up you go, up, up, into the Theatre of Blood! Cue Vincent Price. Peter Lorre. Lon Chaney. Or Bela Lugosi.
It's designed to pay homage to Le Grand Guignol, or Big Puppet which, in case you don't know and as I've probably pointed out previously, was a Parisian theatre, in the Pigalle, which specialized in grisly horror shows. So, a novel idea with a tastily illegitimate heritage. It was, and is, the stage equiv of splatter. Nya-a-ah!
The creative force behind this murderous, cloak-and-dagger show is artistic director, Steve Hopley, who, thanks to pronounced eyebrows and facility for adopting an implacably solemn visage, a la Rowan Atkinson, was veritably born into the genre, in the most comical, high-camp sense.
For a young man, he's had quite a career already; directing a Shakespearean company for half-a-dozen years, winning gongs for writing & directing. Some of the very best and funniest entertainment is in his introductory and intermissive remarks, as the Reverend Doctor Gregory Mortis, warning us of the moral perils to which we're about to be subjected.
Hopley is also author of the first short play (although I've a sneaking suspicion Georges Maurevert might've had a hand in it, around a hundred-and-ten years prior), The Tell-Tale Heart, based on Edgard Allan Poe's tale of the same name. Hopley has reached a long way back into the annals: Poe's piece was published as early as 1843. But it still works.
Craig Walker plays a man wrestling with sleep, who is accosted, suddenly, by a man (Brendon Taylor) he seems to know and who proceeds to strangle him. A struggle ensues, but his assailant triumphs, with the help of a pillow, to smother the formerly sleep-deprived soul. (Need I point to the obvious, serendipitous, metaphorical resonance with a recent political assassination?) He then carefully unfolds a kit of gruesome tools, which he uses to conduct posthumous open-heart surgery; in due course removing the bestilled pump, with copious spurts of blood. The low-budget special effects are surprisingly and alarmingly effective: full marks to Samantha Bailey. Paul McNally's lighting and, particularly sound (creaks, groans, squelches & the like) only but enhance one's delighted distaste. There is a knock at the door. Two police officers (the benign Richard Carwin & crazy-eyed Charles 'Franky' Freyburg) have called upon the murderer, who does his best to feign innocence, but who eventually succumbs to a confession, producing the recently-harvested organ. Don't worry: knowing how it (predictably) ends won't spoil the suspense. Maisie Dubosarsky directs deliciously.
Chocolate Curses is directed by Hopley, but written, speaking of deliciously, by Kyla Ward, who also stars as the creepy, crawling chocolatier, Gatea Griollo, devoid of a soft centre. There are any number of quotable quotes from the script, a clever confection indeed: I only wish I had the human hard-drive to store them. At times, the momentum lags and flags, and the narrative arc goes a little awry but, on the whole, the aberrations are few, far between and worth enduring. (Stage management needs looking at, as there are prolonged, noisy, all too visible and not all that slick rearrangements of the set which also interfere with one's capacity to sustain suspension of disbelief and stay with the story.) Apart from Ward herself, who is thrilling as an archetypal evildoing crone, Heidi Lupprian is a treat as Sacha, particularly when disguised and donning sunnies, a wig of flowing blond curls, trenchcoat and an hilarious Hungarian accent, a kind of undercover Zsa-Zsa, but also in her rather more provocative guise as long-legged temptress, dominatrix and torturer of Theo Bromine, very nearly naked and chained to the wall, upon whom she smears chocolate laced with belladonna, otherwise known as deadly nightshade. Parting really can be such sweet sorrow. Alison Meredith is equally chuckleworthy as the straightfaced, tight-lipped Coco (ha-ha). Craig Walker was amusing, also, as defective Detective Conch, struggling to resist the overwhelming temptations of the theobroma cacao seed. And Freyburg had his diabetically comatose death throes down too.
The final, somewhat longer piece (given the lateness of the hour, a reversal of the order might've been the ticket), directed by Irving Gregory, was more ambitious. Written by Pierre Chaine & Andre de Lorde, 1922 shocker The Torture Garden has a long shipboard preamble before getting down to its core, bruising, barbaric, Sinosadistic business. I'm not sure it stands the test of time quite as well as some other twisted tales of terror. Some editing and adaptation might be brought to bear. Along the way, though, we are introduced to some wonderfully caricatured characters; (fortunately, with enough temporal distance from, say, the very bad old days of the Lambing Flat attacks, to evade offensivesness). Freyburg makes a fine fist of the terribly British, stiff upper-lipped captain (both he and Ward have seen a lot of old black-and-white movies methinks) and, later, as Li-Tchang, a humble, but quietly bloodlusting servant. Walker tickles and torments, as the polite executioner, Ti-Mao, who subjugates Ti-Bah, played with suitable subservience by Lupprian, who doubles as the upright prince, Li-Tong. Good as they are, Brendon Taylor, as the eloquent, impeccably-attired Han, arguably outdoes them in the uproarious parody of a Chinese accent stakes. Taylor also does a terrific turn as the drunken buffoon, Muller, an almost timeless stereotype probably all too familiar to passengers on cut-price Russian cruises of the late 70s and P&O jaunts of more recent times. He's nothing if not vertsatile. Ward is the leprous, paranoid lesbian Annie, who resents and reveres her incorrigibly cruel mistress, Clara, played with convincingly repulsive relish by Meredith. The only (deeply dumbfounding) weak link is Carwin, as John Marshall, a character with melodramatic speeches, played by an actor with neither the energy, or skills, apparently, to deliver them. At times, it seems he can't even be bothered finishing his lines; he allows them to just trail off. And his diction, as the night wore on, became exceedingly lazy. I'm loathe to say it (he'll no doubt be loathe to hear it), but the laughs, therefore, were on Carwin, not his character, Marshall.
All-in-all, Theatre of Blood is a well-adapted, well-written, commendably produced and directed series of plays, sporting some very good actors. A bloody brilliant late-night entertainment, that should ensure you don't get a wink of sleep, which is just as it should be. There is, as I've said, the odd man out, but nothing a bit of belladonna can't fix.
A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!
Newtown Theatre presents
Theatre of Blood: Season 2
Venue: Newtown Theatre | Cnr King and Bray Streets, Newtown
Dates: Friday Nights 11pm
Tickets: $19 / $15 concession (Dress horror and receive the concession price!)
Bookings: 8507 3034 | www.thetheatreofblood.com
