The Exorcist

The Exorcist
A Play By John Pielmeier
Adapted From The Novel By William Peter Blatty

Satanic Schlock
http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/the-exorcist/phoenix-theatre/

Arrrrrrrgh! It may be past the witching hour of Halloween (it's November 1st!) but the demons still are guiding TLT's hand as she pens a review of The Exorcist. Lucky it's all on the internet because - hide your eyes if you don't want to know - the pen, instead of ink, is spurting blood ... 😱😵💀😈😈!!!!

Yes, it's The Exorcist adapted by John Pielmeier from the novel by the late William Peter Batty (no, no, it's ok, it's ok, he died at a ripe old age in a hospital earlier this year!).

The 1973 movie adaptation, with Linda Blair as the devil's victim, remains the best-known spawn of this devilish concoction, a cinematic scarefest that helped launch a thousand other diabolic cinematic franchises ... The Omen, Carrie, The Shining ...

There’s a mildly enjoyable night of schlock horror to be had in this production originating at Birmingham Rep, seemingly trundled out every Halloween.

It won't have you calling the demonic lawyers in for a breach of the Trades Descriptions' Act - as long as you're prepared, tongue-in-cheek-style, to buy into the corny horror tropes.

The special effects are nothing to scream home about and it's the occasional moments of pure physical acting, especially from Claire Louise Connolly as the possessed daughter of Jenny Seagrove's actress divorcée, which elicit the most genuine gasps from the audience and stop the giggles.

Anna Fleischle's set design has the feel of a haunted crooked tower with the action on several levels.

But for TLT, who has seen the movie, and her witch's cat-cum-car sidekick, who hasn’t, the Tutankhamen-curse-like side of the story was very unclear, felt irrelevant and the jumping from scene to scene broke up any previously built-up tension.

This is a play with the parts written so thinly, they seem anorexic. Many in the audience may be left puzzling as to why certain minor characters ever appear and disappear - walking out of the door rather than supernaturally.

The writer John Pielmeier and the director Sean Mathias obviously are relying on  the sensational, communal effect on an audience. But, in the end, the creaky fairground effects are not so-grand-guignol.

There’s a good, solid cast of actors and Peter Bowles has the stature (that's to say height) to bring off an iconic moment when he first appears, ready to perform the exorcism.

But the supporting characters are only there to watch helplessly a sweet little girl’s initiation into the diabolic and the profane, using the recognizable tones of a well known actor as the devil.

The stage version of The Exorcist does also have (sorry, TLT couldn’t avoid mentioning this but she left it until near the end) a disturbing, presumably unintended, resonance with the re-emergence of specific Hollywood child abuse revelations and, perhaps more understandably for the time of the book's first appearance, Catholic church scandals. 

The show correctly has an Adults-Only (or in 1970s’ filmspeak X certificate) label. Finally, though, however much it is a book adaptation divorced from the movie, this feels like a decidedly old-school take on a satanic celluloid classic.

TLT can't help comparing how it is shorn of the cinematic political gestures, psychological and magnified big screen thrills. It should have been hot as hell, but finally attracts a lukewarm amber light. 😈💀

Review Twilight Song

Twilight Song
by Kevin Elyot

Ah! Sweet Mystery Of Life
https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/

Twilight Song, written by the late Kevin Elyot in 2014 just before his death, is an odd little playwriting confection about some odd fellows and a woman. 

Analyse it closely and it turns out to be a tawdry tale of impregnation, loans, property, possible professional fraud, furtive sexual encounters, time slippages and blackmail, all wrapped  in colourful tissue paper and tied with a great big ribbon bow.

We can't begin to add up all the self-consciously theatrical and cinematic styles it seems to go through - there's a touch of Rattigan, definitely some Noel Coward and Alfred Hitchcock, even a snippet of Christopher Isherwood, Charles Dickens and DH Lawrence (or is it EM Foster ...?) and, hey, is that Monty Python parody?

This is the première of Elyot's last play and, despite some sluggish moments, director Anthony Banks gives us a stylish production set on James Cotterill's wooden round stage living room with a settee, curved French windows, mahogany gramophone and a silver drinks' trolley to create a Scotch haze. 

It's a slickly, but rather mechanically, put together play and it rather feels as if the playwright put together the themes going around  rather than a deeply-felt piece. 

Maybe it was intended to go a bit deeper into the gay influence on literature, film and television and what this meant before and after 1967 legislation, yet this never really develops, even in metaphor.  

Still, after a slow and rather stilted beginning, the story does take hold. Barry (Paul Higgins) is a middle-aged gay retired pharmacist who lives with his mother in a North London Victorian villa. While she takes her regular weekly trip to Kent, he invites an estate agent (Adam Garcia) to give a valuation and other services. 

Centred on the house, this modern day encounter slips back to the 1960s and delicate girlish bride Isabella (Bryony Hannah) welcoming two old codgers into her marital home. 

Charles (Hugh Ross), an elderly doctor and seemingly someone's uncle. Harry (Philip Bretherton), a dodgy married solicitor, like Charles, seems well lodged in his current comfortable middle-class existence even if it seems the two men have a past. 

Slipping back and forth in time, by the end we can piece together the story and obtain a sense of an ending but, while it may have been meant as a satire or parody, it comes across as a rather lacklustre playwriting effort.

References to Conservative but pro Welfare State prime minister MacMillan and 1960s emigration to Australia are flagged up as well as a wife's thwarted career.

However, in the end it feels as if we've been lured to spy through the keyhole at a rather insubstantial and too self-satisfied mystery story and it's an amber light.