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Theatre Poe schlocker chills the seasonal spirit

As an alternative to Christmas cheer, you can't do better than the gothic guignol of The Tell-Tale Heart, says SIMON PARSONS

The Tell-Tale Heart
National Theatre, London

FROM the opening drama-award presentation, followed by typical Hammer-horror credits, writer and director Anthony Neilson sets out his stall for what's to follow.

His adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s story, full of foreboding, obsession with death and insight into the tortured workings of the mind, is here effectively combined with his trademark in-yer-face theatrical approach which draws on numerous sources of gothic horror.

The original landlord fixated by his tenant’s evil eye becomes successful dramatist (Tamara Lawrance), holed up in a garret in an attempt to write a new play ironically sponsored by the National Theatre itself.

The victim is a quirky, sociable landlady (Imogen Doel) sporting the ocular abomination that sees everything. The initial routines of the corporeal world, with Lawrance straining on the toilet, eating pizza and getting to grips with a landlady who has an uncomplicated grasp of reality and is untroubled by a tragic history, becomes ever more gruesomely bizarre as her fixation takes over.

There are elements of Hitchcock's Rear Window in Francis O’Connor’s set and Andrzej Goulding’s projections, dominated by a massive skylight looking out onto an ever-moving skyscape. Time weighs down on events, while Nick Powell’s sound design harks back to Bernard Herrmann’s atmospheric scores for Hitchcock.

Neilson keeps his tongue firmly in cheek during the post-murder interrogation, lighting up both stage and auditorium and transforming David Carlyle’s sharply spoken detective into a camp doppelganger. His appalling rendition of One Day in Your Life while the playwright tries to admit her guilt is outrageously funny without dispelling the tension.

As much meta theatre as horror story, the common denominators of gothic fantasies are employed predictably yet effectively, while references to current productions, the National's Theatre working methods and direct lighting of the audience at key moments reinforces the sense of self-awareness in Neilson's adaptation.

If you like your gothic horror with humour, style and a perfect seasoning of shock effects, then you'll not be disappointed. Best to book now as this is a production that will likely to sell out.

Runs until January 8, box office: nationaltheatre.org.uk

 

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