GHOST STORIES BY CANDLELIGHT - REVIEW - SAM WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE

Drawing heavily from the classic canon of the British supernatural, HighTide’s trio of contemporary Gothic narratives uses traditional storytelling formats to address contemporary themes. Directed by Elayce Ismail, reverent musical interludes accompany tales of apparitions and nighttime conjurings that speak of women from the East of England. Unfortunately, the effect is less chilling and more lightweight, with conventional structures, predictable plot twists and an over-reliance on external forces to drive narrative shoring up some of the less relatable aspects of the genre.

Nicola Werenowska’s The Beach House, perhaps the cleanest of the three tales, tells of a mother and daughter’s trip to a colleague’s disused coastal hut. Minor squabbles and the frustrations of parenting accompany the expertly described seaside locale, with Elizabeth Crarer’s pacy and authentic performance deftly realising the point of view of a working single mother. Her discovery of her daughter’s entrapment in the hut creates some moments of subtle dread, and there is no shying away from the ghost — she is presented in stark description with some pleasing doubling effects. However, the final ‘shock horror’ twist in the final line feels a little obvious and lacking in psychological nuance.

The dangerous tendency in Gothic stylisation towards heavy-handed conclusions also plagues Shamser Sinha’s Sacrifice. This two-hander follows another mother and daughter duo out at night, only here the story focuses on the dynamic between Katie Cherry’s WitchTok-watching youngster and Crarer’s spirit-summoning mother. The details are muddled, but the gist is that they are out at night to commune with Cherry’s deceased brother. Chants of scripture and excavations of the family’s troubled history are lit by handheld torches, and the actors do a good job of finding the shifting relationship of these two women gripped by death in different ways. However, much of the on-stage action feels shouty and superficial, and the twist ending is more contrived and predictable than with the first.

The final piece, Kelly Jones’ Run, takes us back to the safer ground of the monologue, with Cherry playing a working-class young woman out and about in Romford. It begins with a punchy encounter and shifts into a gobby, surreal wander through the streets, exploring a woman’s struggle against the external threat of the night. The voice is well-realised here, and Cherry balances laughs with the earnest angst of a woman made to feel unsafe. While the message of the piece is well-intentioned, it overwhelms the storytelling, placing its ideas over its character and failing to conjure a multi-dimensional personality.

Tying the three pieces together, Loren O’Dair sings a folk-inspired narrative melody, composed by Georgia Shackleton and accompanied by a violin. The repetition of the tune reinforces the mood of the transitions, but the songs are too long and don’t quite manage to pull together the three separate tales into a coherent whole. The final conclusion tries to hinge on an ecological message, but this only contributes to a sense of surface-level engagement with its subjects and confusion around what the piece is all about.

Perhaps working more effectively in a fringier venue, the performances aren’t able to conjure a compelling atmosphere in the Sam Wanamaker’s candlelit space and fail to implicate the audience or present anything particularly fresh. What has the potential to be an eerie night of psychological curiosities gets bogged down in thinly constructed political commentary, and two-dimensional characters that don’t undergo significant transformation. With so many ghosts in the world, these ones feel made up, solipsistic, and a distraction from more pressing concerns. A distinctly un-spooky evening.

{🎟 AD: PR Invite – Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review}

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