Haunting tales of an unsettling past
Oh Whistle… Two Ghost Stories by M R James, performed by R M Lloyd Parry. Quay Theatre, Sudbury, January 19
The creepy old Suffolk houses lurking in M R James' ghost stories, providing gloomy backdrops for seriously scary hauntings and happenings, are uncomfortably close in this production.
R M Lloyd Parry re-tells the two stories 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad', and 'The Ash Tree', in an electrifying solo performance.
Victorian readers thrilled to this type of story, narrated by a learned gentleman character, who assures his audience that he has heard the tale from elsewhere. Spooky events, redolent of past wrongdoings, witnessed by respectable Bishops or retired Colonel characters, never failed to seize the imagination.
R M Lloyd Parry's mastery of this genre is superb. Speaking from the depths of a fireside armchair, the stage barely lit by four candles, he is every inch the learned scholar sharing his tales with us. The few props required are within arms' reach – table, books, but are not entirely visible, their presence suggested rather than realised. As with the props, so the stories.
'Oh Whistle..' recounts the amateur efforts of a Cambridge professor who, intending to practise his golf in a remote Suffolk coastal spot literally falls into the ruins of a forgotten Templar church. Poking around, he just happens to find something resembling a whistle, which he just happens to blow on return to his hotel in the shadowy evening. Trying to ignore the shadowy figure chasing him across the lonely, windswept beach, he falls victim to terrible nightmares and ghastly goings on. The full cast of rattling window panes and night storms reinforce the haunting quality of this tale. Lloyd Parry's rendition would have done credit to the master himself.
The eponymous Ash Tree grows, of course, just too close to a country house which has seen better days. The third generation owner pays too little respect to local tales of the past, and has the grave of a suspected witch disturbed with building works at the Church. Lloyd Parry enlivens the conversational, fireside tone with the voices of the different characters. They all knew, as we did, that no good would come of it, but Sir Richard thought better and was dead the next day. The never fully answered endings to both stories hang uncomfortably in the imagination.
What a pleasure to listen to such an accomplished storyteller in the intimacy of the Quay Theatre. Even those cynics who dismiss the supernatural should check that the window's shut before retiring for the night. Just in case.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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