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Failing to find the fear factor
Jack Shepherd as the signalman in Dicken's ghostly story Classic
Ghosts Lichfield
Garrick *** IT
IS a strange thing about humans that we like being terrified, not in
fear of our lives mind you, or from mortal danger, or even things that
go bump in our own particular lonely hour of night, but a nice, warm,
comfortable dose of fear complete with shivers down the spine and
perhaps a box of Maltesers. Otherwise
why would horror films, ghost trains, chambers of horror and, these days
to a lesser extent, ghost stories be so popular and while this double
bill of chill does raise a few shivers it sadly never manages to goad
the imagination into racing. The opener is O, Whistle
And I’ll Come To You My Lad, by celebrated Victorian writer of ghost
stories M R James from his 1904 book Ghost Stories of an Antiquary,
the title coming from a Robert Burns poem of 1793. Directed and designed by
Michael Lunney, the man behind producers Middle Ground Theatre
Company, it uses the video wall technique he employed in his recent
Cadfael, this time to show the seashore and mysterious figures
running o the beach. Lunney gives us a clever, if
somewhat cluttered set of The Globe Inn by the beach at Burnstow on the
East Coast in 1907. A patch of raised sand at the back of the
Enter the guest, academic Prof
Perkins, played by well known stage actor Jack Shepherd who is perhaps
best known as Wycliffe from TV, who has arrived for a golfing holiday
with Col Wilson played by another TV regular Terrence Hardiman. Attending to their needs is
Barnaby Fitch played with a sort of superior subservience, suggesting
proprietor rather than manager, by Dickin Ashworth.
The Prof finds a mysterious
whistle in an old Knights Templar’s burial ground with a Latin
inscription translated as "Who is this who is coming?", gives it a blow
and suddenly the constant wind turns into a raging storm. The next day we have someone
waving from his room whn there is no one there and when the Prof goes to
bed we have noises from his wardrobe, doors opening, windows opening,
sheets on a second bed in his room folding back on their own and finally
some moaning spirit, seen for a split second, who seems to leg it
through the window leaving the Prof a gibbering wreck. There are some well-executed
special effects and a few moments when breath stops in that split second
when fear takes hold but in truth without knowing the provenance or
significance of the whistle, whose ghost we are dealing with and who the
figures running about the beach are this is hardly the stuff of
nightmares. The delicious discomfort of
theatrical terror comes from fear of the unknown, but come on, meet us
halfway we have to know enough about the unknown to be frightened of it. Adapted by Margaret May Hobbs
the tension is built quietly and the expectation of being scared witless
is all there but then, rather like the ghost that pops out of the dark
in a fairground ghost train it is all over and gone and we are back in
the daylight, or in this case the bar with an ice cream. With no
explanation, no reason to prey on the imagination, there is nothing to
be frightened of. One member of the audience summed it up as the curtain
fell and the house lights were slow to appear asking: “Is that it or is
there another bit? It was and there wasn’t. There was no fault with the acting just nothing to really say or act out. The second of the double
header was The Signalman, Charles Dickens’ ghost story adapted by
Francis Evelyn. Dickens grew up in the railway
age and The accident was at
Staplehurst in Kent when the Folkstone to London boat train derailed on
a viaduct where a length of track had been removed in engineering work
when a timetable had been misread and a man with a red warning flag was
only 554 yards away instead of the regulation 1,000. Ten people died and, although
Dickens did not work this real life incident into his story, Evelyn has
introduced it into his adaptation with dramatic effect.
Dickens did mention a fatal
collision between two trains in a tunnel in which 22 people had died
five years earlier, the Clayton Tunnel crash near Brighton, which had
been the worst rail disaster up to that time, a news sensation that
would have been known by just about all his readers. In this new tale Shepherd is a
signalman in a lonely, one-man box on a single track line by the
entrance to a tunnel. Into his life comes a
traveller, Hardiman again, a man staying at a nearby hotel who is
fascinated by trains and all things rail. As a friendship develops we
discover the signalman’s fears and his frightening secret. He is
tormented be a mysterious figure who appears by the tunnel entrance to
herald an imminent disaster. Each time he is seen death follows – and
the apparition is back! Any more detail and the plot
is spoiled but suffice to say this is a vast improvement on whistle up
the wind in the first half, adding drama, relevance and even purpose to
the mystery. Lunney has produced a
gloriously realistic set, a nicely ghostly spectre, suitable smoke and
effects for trains and even a convincing express thundering through the
tunnel. Sadly crackling popping sound
from speakers, which surely will be quickly sorted, marred the
performance of both stories and perhaps we could have had less of the
gale force wind noises as a constant background and with a stronger
first story this could have been a more frightening and less frustrating
night. Roger
Clarke
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stage
provides a sort of mini set as a burial ground, beach and golf course –
while ghostly cast in darkness in frontt prepare the set of guest room
and inn reception for the next scene.