As Halloween appears on the horizon, like a soul-sucking zombie stumbling towards a sleeping baby, theatre land is getting its spooky on. But, asks our theatre editor, Nell Frizzell, is there really such a thing as stagefright…?
The 24 Hour Plays is a living nightmare.
To stand on a stage, less than 10 hours since you were first given a script and be expected to perform in front of 1,000 near-strangers is but a dropped towel away from pure, pillow-punching night terror.
However, this is far from the only stage show that will be keeping you up at night. The “utter filth and depravity” of the RSC’s Marat/Sade has probably prompted a fair amount of tossing and turning in audiences for whom a “toy” is more child’s plaything and less an anal probe, while Edward Bond’s Saved has no doubt tapped into many viewer’s greatest infanticide fears. Neither, it must be said, will either win any accolades for “date play of the year”.
If you like your horror with a hearty side of jollity, then Soho Theatre’s Terror 2011 is a pretty perfect place to knock back a cider and black. Or a Pernod and water – I’m not here to judge. For, while I may be as goth as a cheese and pickle sandwich (black lace makes me look like a bay window), even I can see that heart-jumping black-outs and jangled nerves are a great recipe for a little midnight thrusting.
You see, whether it’s things that go bump in the night, the revelation of something supernatural, an off-stage scream or the creeping sense of dread, nothing is more likely to send you diving into the hairy arms of your companion than a racing heart rate a sprinkling of ghostly fear. Unless, of course, you have the terribly bad luck of being Shakespeare’s ghost story victim, Ophelia, in which case you’re probably better off diving into a rubber ring.
Soho Theatre’s Terror brings together some of Britain’s best young theatre talent: Lucy Kirkwood, Carl Grose, Tom Holloway and Jack Thorne – the latter of which has written a monologue of such chilling public school cruelty that I may never be able to look Jeremy Irons in Brideshead Revisited ever again. But while Carol Burnett may have said that “Comedy is just tragedy plus time”, I would argue that comedy is just horror plus a ukulele-playing burlesque singer and song about diddling your teacher, which is precisely where cabaret celebrities Desmond O’Connor and Merrill Grant come in.
Can horror theatre ever be as scary as horror film, I hear you ask? Does the fourth wall act as a sort of live security blanket, with any onstage suspense and tension easily broken by a well-timed sneeze or cough? Or does the social pressure of audience etiquette leave us, like victims of Sartre’s most famous play, with no exit, trapped in our seats and unable to escape our own fear?
Well, I suppose when it comes down to it, we all have our own theatre horror: the play that will have us weeping in the aisles and shaking with terror. It just so happens that mine would be a six-hour devised piece involving showtunes and a man in a top hat.
Do you have a favourite scary play? Let us know in the comments section below.
Terror 2011 is at The Soho Theatre until 5 November.
Illustration by Narcsville.
