Post-Hallowe’en, pre-winter solstice, just a hint of the foggy London nights of yore, what better notion for Second Skin than to re-visit the work of that baleful son of Stokie, E.A Poe? I say “re-visit” advisedly : apart from the resonating but much-truncated Raven of the first of six pieces of the evening, be ready for startling re-imaginings of the old melancholic’s works. Be ready too for startling new writing : a bold decision, given Poe’s wondrous way with language.
The evening is compellingly dovetailed together by Stephen Connery Brown’s ingratiatingly ambivalent, bibulous Preacher, confessor, compère and confederate, keeping our minds ever focussed on frailty, mortality and transience, our nightmares not so different from our forebears’. The ease of his transitions between these various roles was vital, not least in the segue from comfy pulpit to haunted chamber, with a Raven (David Hugh) straight out of Murnau …
This church is a treasure-house of usable things for a show like this. If you have an altar, a gallery, a grill to the crypt, box pews, plain stuccoed walls above Tudor arches, sepulchres within, a graveyard without, powerful acoustics and dark shadows everywhere, use them. Second Skin does, comprehensively, with bold lighting and high-impact sound … and in one piece, most spectacularly : no need for spoilers.
That said, that there is some electrifying new writing, in The Pit and the Pendulum and Premature Burial in particular. We have full-on updating from the Toledo of the Inquisition to the cells of Abu Ghraib, and from Poe’s first-person narrative of “charnel apprehensions” to the dangers of Helmand. Poe’s prose has gone, but there are new resonances ; new rage as well. But The Black Cat hits the perfect note. The family situation, the gender of the narrator, the dark deeds are all adapted, but the best of Poe’s writing is preserved and above all the quality of the lucid yet raving narrative. In Mia Zara’s mesmerising vocal and physical performance under Andy McQuade’s sensitive direction we get the full, claustrophobic Poe experience.
It would be invidious to commend the acting without mentioning Priyank Morjaria’s tour de force in The Pit and the Pendulum, peopling his chamber of horrors both with his tormentors and his remembered family : a touching, shocking and riveting performance, the obscenities uttered in his pain and panic echoing legitimately around the ancient, hallowed walls.
Site-specific, promenade productions are one of the great strengths of the Fringe. It’s truly appalling that a wonderful, unique and historic venue like St Mary’s should be under threat, as are so many others. If it’s your local, please support it.
I don’t normally justify stars, but on this six-part production I should just say that it is, indeed, a **** production, plenty of very sound three-star stuff going on, but at least two performances that are shakingly excellent. What an evening!
