The Review - THEATRE by SIMON WROE Published: 20 September 2007
Death, drama and the deluge
THE DELUGE New End Theatre
IN a previous incarnation the New End Theatre building functioned as a mortuary; storing cold, waxen cadavers where audience members now sit in a similar lifeless state... I tell you this, dear reader, to cast a ghastly, slightly melodramatic pall over this production of renowned Gothic author Karen Blixen’s The Deluge At Norderney, adapted for the stage by master of the macabre Robert Wynne-Simmons.
Mr Wynne-Simmons, whose credits include the cult horror film Blood on Satan’s Claw, takes a subtler approach in his direction here, favouring quiet implications of the uncanny through a carefully-woven web of stories, as recounted by the four disparate characters trapped in an eerie shelter by the rising floodwaters.
While they await their impending doom, the spirited old maid Malin (Clare Welch) encourages them to tell their tales, each person taking on the characters of each others tales. This exposition complements the themes of porous identity and brooding uncertainty well: the pious Cardinal (Frank Grimes) shifting suddenly to lecherous baron or scheming prince.
Most interesting of all the stories, perhaps, is that of the young melancholic Jonathan (Nigel Mattison), whose black mood has become all the rage in his native Denmark, so that “even his suicide has become a fashionable event”.
A grinning skull and a dead body, carried on the waves, which beats against the floorboards all up the Gothic quota, but it is the evocative storytelling and the final chilling denouement which stay with you long after the lights come up. Until September 29
0870 033 2733
Comment on this article. (You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)
