Saturday, November 19, 2011; 10:11 AM – by Gary Naylor

4 goat hooves

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!

Poe: Macabre Resurrections

Published Friday 25 November 2011 at 15:31 by Jonathan Watson

Rumours scurried around the pubs in Stoke Newington when Second Skin Theatre’s tenure at Ryan’s Bar on Church Street came to an abrupt end. Quite frankly, the hearsay – whether its tantalising La Chunga was too provocative for the landlord – is not the concern. I’m more interested in the company’s response. And, nodding to Punchdrunk’s stifling Mask of the Red Death at the BAC, its decision to infect every nook of the Rectory of the Old St Mary’s Church with Poe’s insidious, macabre imagination was unnerving, yes, but also inspired. Relocating to such a monumental building in the heart of the area was also welcome proof of its commitment to the community in north London.

Fitting then that it is a strong, communal effort, from artistic director Andy McQuade down through his ensemble of keen-eyed directors, the energetic cast and writers who know how to graft a modern mask onto the short story master. The whole site, from the altar to the font to the graveyard, is alive, bolstered by the superb sound design that breathes in the background. As our guide, the Preacher, Stephen Connery Brown is masterfully unbalanced. His intuitive pronunciation echoes into the darkness of the church and Poe’s imagination, and, if at any time the pace of five different stories starts to lag, his complete performance tugs you back into the atmosphere and reminds you where you are – a gloomy, cold burial ground.

As a fringe production, and with tight purse strings, this does not ascend the heights of Punchdrunk’s magnificent reimagination. That said, it is still a marker of an adroit ensemble that promises more gripping, and hopefully grisly, treats for the future.