Eastgate
Theatre, Peebles
Four
stars
It’s
very much a case of better the devil you know in the Vanishing Point company’s
stripped-down touring version of their hit piece of theatrical gothic. While
there might just be storytelling MC Robert Jack and crooning composer Biff
Smith onstage compared to the coffin-load of sixteen actor/musicians who graced
the original, the beyond the grave stories and songs remain the same.
As the
audience enter the twilight zone for the restless dead as if on a guided tour
of what lies beneath the earth, Jack and Smith lead us through a series of chronicles
of deaths foretold. Each are laid bare in Nikki Kalkman and Matthew Lenton’s
infinitely portable production with the knowing foreboding of master
storytellers. Think Edgar Allan Poe hosting Jackanory. Each yarn is illustrated
with a series of sepia-tinted photographs that sit astride the coffin of
Kenneth MacLeod’s funeral parlour set as they might do in similar memoriam on a
living room mantlepiece. From such mementoes, a series of lost souls are
immortalised in anecdote and image.
There
is bonhomie and gallows humour aplenty at play here in these tales from the
crypt. Whisky handed out and spectral singalongs are encouraged, though anyone inadvertently
breaking the spell should beware, as they will be singled out and dealt with by
way of a withering remark delivered with elegance and charm.
Without
the ornate baroque arrangements of his band A New International to accompany him,
Smith’s songs are revealed as a form of acoustic subterranean chansons, while
the interplay between him and Jack gives the pair the air of a seasoned double
act. While the full version of The Dark Carnival is to be cherished in all its
grandiloquent glory, this pocket-sized reimagining conjures up a cabaret-styled
sprite of a show, which, given the ghost of a chance, suggests it might yet
have a long life to come.
The Herald, May 20th 2019
ends
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