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The Silence of the Lambs

Theatre Royal, Glasgow 

Four stars 

 

Darkness becomes Gina Gionfriddo’s new stage version of Thomas’ Harris’ 1988 novel. The second in the author’s Hannibal Lecter quartet saw the most erudite of incarcerated cannibals gnaw his way into mass consciousness by way of Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film version. More than three decades on, Gionfriddo returns to the book to pick over the horrors anew. The fact that Lecter isn’t the villain of the piece but its conscience speaks volumes about the age in which he was sired. 

 

In Harris’ tale of rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling’s search for a serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill who skins his victims, we enter a 1980s where the fallout of therapy culture has left a lot of psychological damage in its wake. 

 

In Nikolai Foster’s touring production that began life at the Curve Theatre Leicester, John Partridge’s Lecter may initially lack charm as he is wheeled on like some caged exhibit, but his dangerous presence soon leaves its mark. This is certainly the case for Mollie Gallagher’s Clarice, who transcends her initial role as ingĂ©nue in search of a father figure to become her own woman. 

 

Buffalo Bill is given a messed up creepy allure by Sam Jackson that puts him in a lineage alongside Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates in Psycho. Bill’s craving to sew a new body for himself is the flip side to Lecter’s own hunger for flesh and blood. As for Clarice, Michael Taylor’s set of steel and glass becomes  a prison not just for Lecter, but for her too. 

 

Assorted victims played by Lottie Amor are given infinitely more agency than as mere scream queens, with bratty senator’s daughter Catherine even offering some kind of physical solution to her imprisonment she considers seriously enough to say out loud twice. 

 

Beyond the amateur psychology the story is built on, it is also a frighteningly realised affair, with the dangerous cut and thrust between Gallagher and Partridge as Clarice and Lecter simmering on the flirtatious. By the end of the play, Clarice may have made her mark and helped purge a few demons along the way, but Gionfriddo’s version suggests an entire society has mommy issues enough to be attempting to shed its old skins or else climb back into the womb. 


The Herald, August 26, 2026

 

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