“Please take your seats, the performance is starting in ten minutes” is a sentence I have not heard shouted through a theatre foyer before on arrival – at tonight’s return to the Churchill Theatre this is a first one. It turns out this is not uttered to the general public but the college kids occupying the first rows during this mid-week press night performance. Wouldn’t it be great if theatres would invite local school papers as well, I wonder – but maybe they do already.
Shock Horror aims to deliver everything the title announces: Uncountable references to Stephen King, Alfred Hitchcock and especially the conspiracies surrounding Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining during a midnight screening of horror films in a decaying music hall, once converted as a repertory cinema, abandoned years ago. The staging suits the practical brutalism of the Churchill Theatre well – its seats by the way are still the most comfortable in the whole of London, with enough space to make the audience jump through roaring thunder, devious cackles, mysterious steps and other haunting surround sound effects. With a menacing grin, this fright revue ticks off music boxes, teddy bears, red balloons, knife silhouettes and glaring torches shown through the auditorium, all topped by a mean-spirited ventriloquist’s dummy in the much stronger (and scarier) second half. Maybe that interval could be cut altogether?
Dreams are shared of being a scriptwriter, of the ambitions to become a film maker, of first attempts in special effects, later of accusations of giving editors not enough credit and the dooming fact that all families have ghosts – Herbert, played by Alex Moran, has a lot to tell his audience about his past. And from the silver screen just behind him, the past feels close, is getting closer and closer, and soon far too close to guarantee his security or sanity. Memories and stagehands appear and vanish, always a step ahead. In the end it is just Herbert on stage, the rest caught only as projections or through vicious ghosts and puppetry. This play is a monodrama which is none, leaving it to a single person to act for four.
Shock Horror should be enjoyed like most horror films absolutely neither as a study on mental health and family trauma but as what it has been summarised beautifully in the one-page essay on Horror And Theatre in the printed program: A shared experience of unsettling thrill and frights. Here also the big stage scares like The Women In Black and Ghost Stories are noted, and while this production might not reach the terror they induce, it quotes all the big masters of suspense respectfully and joyfully. It’s a nevertheless scary evening, just in time to get into the spirit of Halloween.
**** from 5 stars
Written and directed by Ryan Simons, sound design by Beth Duke
Thunder Road Theatre kicked off its national tour at the Churchill Theatre with further tour dates already scheduled nationwide from September to November 2024.
Sadie takes the Stage 