★★★★☆
Four Stars

In the midst of a dystopian, apocalyptic future, as humanity is flooded with famine, fear, and ferocious foxes, William and Judith are discussing the weather. It is probably going to rain: well, this is England, after all. Dawn King’s Foxfinder plunges us into a dark tale of deeply nuanced allegory, grounded in a familiar world of laundry and leek-farming – and it is this heterogeneity which makes the play so riveting.

Foxfinder is ruthlessly tense, from its foreboding beginnings to the bitter end. As the audience shuffle in, married couple Samuel and Judith Covey (Leo Suter and Phoebe Hames) are already onstage, waiting uneasily in their isolated home in the West Country for William Bloor (Nick Finerty) to arrive. He is a foxfinder, and he’s come to search their farm for contamination with these sly devils.

Foxes can ‘disembowel a grown man with their claws’, William is keen to assert – and that’s not all. Foxes are the cause of bad harvests, bad weather, and they can even scrabble their way into your dreams. In fact, the entire nation’s calamity can be neatly pinned on ‘the enemy within’. Strange, then, that a fox hasn’t been sighted for years.

From afar, this might look like an obvious enough parable for fascist fear-mongering, but Foxfinder manages to remain surprisingly open to interpretation. The fox becomes a symbol for sexual desire and for fundamentalism, and the play is anti-communist and anti-capitalist all at once. The broadness of the metaphor might actually become distancing, if it weren’t for its remarkably gifted cast, who keep the story solidly rooted to the ground.

With glassy eyes and a peroxide-blonde crop, Bloor literally shines as the brainwashed puppet of the governmental Institution, spouting a neurotic creed of self denial: ‘Hunger is a suitable reminder of the spectre of starvation that haunts our land!’ His mechanical movements and strained smiles create an unnerving inhumanity – but, when he awkwardly stutters and stumbles through an amusingly detailed interrogation of Judith’s ‘intercourse’ habits, we see flashes of a teenage insecurity which remind us that the foxfinder is only nineteen.

Suter brings depth and tragedy to Sam’s taciturn nature through moments of emotion: his measured, skeletal speech finally cracks under the pressure of describing his young son’s recent death. Eventually the lure of an all-applicable scapegoat entices Sam to madness, as he fanatically hunts for spectral foxes that can lift the blame of his son’s loss from his own shoulders. Hames’ touchingly kind stoicism renders her the play’s moral compass, and Carla Kingham makes neighbour Sarah’s bitingly taut and guilt-ridden betrayal of the Coveys my favourite moment of the play.

As the phantom of the fox flits between the characters, causing betrayal, doubt, and despair, it becomes clear that this is a claustrophobic tragedy with no escape from its inexorable doom. By the second half, you’ll be itching for relief – but, when it’s finally over, desperate to be back again tomorrow.

Foxfinder is playing at the Keble O’Reilly until Saturday 2nd November. Tickets are available here

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

With Halloween just around the corner, visiting a play that somehow involves ghosts in the classic mystery setting that is an old venerable mansion is more than appropriate to celebrate that time of the year when fake spider webs and pumpkin cupcakes are ubiquitous. And almost like Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods, this new play written by Elliot Keren with a slightly clichéd title puts a humorous twist on the story reminiscent of the work of Edgar Allan Poe.

The plot follows the household of the elderly Lady Barucone (Kate Bennett) as they prepare for the arrival of her nephew Ruben (Harry Lee); upon arriving at the manor, Ruben is welcomed by the coquettish but rascally twins Felicity and Elissa (Emma Turnbull and Izzy Renton), who are on a quest to exasperate the unnerved housekeeper Mr Baxby (Alex Wood), as well as the house’s voice of reason, the butler, portrayed in a delightfully prim manner by Will Law.

Although the presence of several ghosts in the manor is established fairly early onwards by the cast’s almost nonchalant conversations with the invisible residents, they try to hide the haunted nature of the house from Ruben and merely resort to terrifying him with creepy stories about the ghastly incidents happening within the house. However, it isn’t long until wary Ruben finds out about the secrets of the slightly wacky elderly Lady.

Barucone Manor and its ghosts might not make you jump out of your seat like The Lady in Black due to the successful juxtaposition of mystery with comedic elements, but thanks to the well-timed performance of the cast and the clever stage lighting, the atmosphere was pleasantly eerie in certain scenes, with a blood-covered frying pan somewhat being the almost comical climax of the play.

Occasionally it seemed like Elliot Keren tried just a tad too hard to make the characters as cranky as possible; however, the undeniable chemistry between the actors and the nicely flowing dialogues compensated for any moments of awkward eccentricity. 

The Ghosts of Barucone Manor will not exactly give you goosebumps (which it, admittedly, doesn’t intend to) if that’s what you’re looking for, but is a well produced and very enjoyable alternative to a night spent at home in your PJs eating Cadbury Screme Eggs and watching re-runs of The Walking Dead.

The Ghosts of Barucone Manor is playing till the 2nd Nov at the BT, tickets £5

Poor Bridge. Since Helen Fielding published the third and final installment of Bridget Jones, Mad About the Boy, large sections of the British public have turned en masse against her. It would seem that Bridget, so long a fictional national treasure, is not ‘v.g.’ after all. Whether it’s fans expressing outrage at Fielding’s decision to kill off Mark Darcy, criticising the books for being antifeminist, or badly written, everyone is determined to take a potshot.

As an ardent Bridget Jones fan, my heart swelled with indignation at such disparaging treatment of one of my favourite comic fictional characters – what did Bridget do to deserve such vitriol? Here I must make the distinction between the book and the film versions, which are too often conflated; the books are much funnier and more socially observant than the films, where Fielding’s brilliant idiosyncratic writing style just doesn’t translate onto the screen. Her diary entry headings – ‘9st, alcohol units 4 (getting into mood), cigrarettes 27 (but last day before giving up), calories 2455’ – are lost, where in the books they are an important part of Bridget’s erratic stream-of-consciousness.

Generations of readers have loved Bridget Jones because she is hilarious. The Bridget of the first two books negotiates a mine-field of Smug Marrieds, sexist bosses and fuckwit boyfriends in a dysfunctional, alcohol-fueled, chain-smoking blitz. Her endearing ineptitude at life is something most of us have felt and cannot help recognising within ourselves. Suzanne Moore’s problem with Bridget, that she is ‘obsessed with three of the most boring things in the entire world: dieting, trying to get a bloke and drinking and feeling bad about it’ entirely misses the point that when it comes to booze, boys and food Bridget never sticks to the rules of what she is supposed to do and still has a great time. The ‘obsessive’ nature of Bridget’s musings on the above is merely an ironic comedic device to show us what Bridget may not realise herself – that she actually doesn’t give a shit. If she did, we would be reading a very different book.

Being a feminist and liking Bridget Jones doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Fielding has no pretensions about what her novels are; we are not meant to approach the book expecting a serious exploration of the state of womanhood, nor are we supposed to feel that all women are as hopeless as she can be. Bridget was never intended to be a paradigm of female success, so we need to stop judging her for falling short of the feminist tick-list. Above all, Bridget is a comedic fictional character who we mustn’t take so seriously.

Unfortunately, Fielding’s wicked sense of humour that made the first novel such a pleasure to read fails to come through in Mad About the Boy. The new book reads like a cruel caricature of the former Bridge, in which her snort-inducing sexcapades and ineffective calorie counting are replaced by nit-checks and grieving over Darcy (who dies a suitably noble death by being killed on a humanitarian aid trip). It’s like Fielding has identified the secret formula that made the older books so readable and tried to impose it upon the new landscape of an older, sadder, widowed Bridget with two kids and a 29 year old toyboy called ‘Roxter’. This is the Bridget of the noughties; the delightfully old-school references to waiting around the landline for a call have been replaced by new obsessions with Twitter followers and online dating profiles. Fad diets turn into visits to the obesity clinic and awkward answer-phone messages to men now become over-zealous texts and emails.

This new, technologised Bridget seems alien to the Bridget we have come to know and love – the chirpy, abbreviated style comes across as strained, failing to reach the comedic sophistication of the previous books.

Unlike the first diary, Bridget’s fixation on men, and what the rules of texting back should be, is frustrating – surely an older wiser Bridge isn’t still panicking if someone she likes doesn’t text back immediately? It’s not about making judgements on how a fifty year old woman should behave – I love the idea that Bridget has a young toyboy – but some of the neuroticism that Bridget as a thirtyish-year old woman had, and many women identified with, doesn’t transfer convincingly to middle-age.

Call me ageist, but I think the story of Bridget-at-50 should never have been written. It’s the slurring, hapless yet pleasingly defiant woman of the nineties who I’ll remember fondly – and who deserves to be hailed as one of the most hilarious diarists in fiction.

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

The Death of Maria opens with a scene of domestic serenity: Maria, a contented German housewife living in 1593, is quietly sewing while she thanks her beloved husband Thomas for the flowers he has bought her. The conversation is mundane, relaxed, affectionate – not so different from that of a modern-day couple. Until witches are mentioned. Suddenly this world seems distant and unreal, one in which child cannibalism and diabolical pacts are discussed as accepted realities.

The play, written and directed by Camilla Rees, was inspired by the real story of a single woman named Maria Hollin, who was accused of practising black magic in 1593. Like the Maria of the play, she refused to confess to anything until the ninth time she was tortured. Much of the script comes directly from the original trial documents.

Most of the play consists of Maria’s lengthy interrogation which, although convincingly acted by Evie Ioannidi as the afflicted woman, seems a little repetitive. Although the incessant questioning from the ferocious interrogator (Andrew Dickinson) makes the scene more realistic, a little variety in the dialogue would have made it more engaging. The interrogator is not the only weary one when he declares, “I grow tired of repeating myself!” The sense of reality is also undermined by a script that is, at times, somewhat clichéd. Though Maria has an air of historical authenticity, the glib lines of the interrogator belong to a horror film villain, not a 16^th century witch hunter.

What The Death of Maria captures brilliantly is the eponymous character’s horrific mental breakdown: at first she is unerring in her claims to innocence, but by the end Maria has lost that sense of integrity – she blames herself for the four years she has spent in prison, and poignantly tells her husband (a brilliant Jordan Reed) “I don’t feel anything anymore”.

The Maria we saw at the beginning has disappeared, suggesting that the Death of the title is more symbolic than literal. Remarkably, her body has survived the torture – only now she must face notoriety and ostracism, a fate perhaps worse than death.

The play often uses a split stage to heighten this sense of alienation – characters on one side comment on Maria’s imprisonment whilst the accused herself stands alone, unable to directly answer their malicious speculations.

The Death of Maria flits wonderfully between certainty and doubt. Everything that seemed certain at the beginning has come into question by the end: Maria’s innocence, her husband’s undying love, the support and power of her father – all can be doubted at some point. It is this powerful depiction of the changeability of what we consider to be certain that makes The Death of Maria well worth seeing.  

The Death of Maria is playing at the BT Studio until Saturday 2nd November. Tickets are available here

★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

In Edvard Munch’s The Sick Child, a young girl lies on her deathbed, bright red hair jarring with her greyish pallor.  It is a portrait of a memory – of Munch’s sister, who died when she was fifteen and he was thirteen.  Munch became obsessed with this image, producing six versions of the very same scene.  It is almost as if he recognised the hold the past had over the living, transforming his sister into his own personal ghost, a dead figure who haunted him even in the act of creation.

It is not surprising then that Ibsen’s Ghosts held such resonance for him.  It is a dead character whose presence is felt most keenly in the play, and whose past taints those left behind.  Munch designed the set for a 1906 Berlin production, but the drawings appear as personal pictorial responses to the play rather than design.  The Alvings’ living-room is intimate, bordering on claustrophobic.  A hard black armchair, owned by Munch’s violent father, dominates the foreground, but stands suggestively half turned away from us.  Echoes appear in the compression of stiff black figures, bent inwards by the walls and ceiling pressing down on them.

Translated onto stage, this becomes a very different picture.  In his Munch-inspired production, Stephen Unwin’s set is backed by a wide screen projecting endless rain, transforming the natural elements into a force that invades the Alvings’ home.  But this extension into the outside world heightens the stage’s natural breadth, and all claustrophobia is lost.  The domineering black chair is shoved into the background, registering only the vaguest hint of menace.  More predictably, the gaze of the dead Captain Alving burdens the characters on set, as he surveys them impassively from his portrait.  The threat of despair is still present – but less radically and subtly so than in Munch’s vision.     

Overall the production fails to provide any new insight into the play, and is stuck in fussy convention.  The play’s turning point, as Mrs Alving’s orphanage is burnt down, catalyses no genuine shock or despair, but rather a flurry of sartorial activity.  Hats are demanded for, women cocooned in elaborate shawls, and only after this prolonged hassle does anyone venture outside towards the disaster. 

Characters also end up as dated caricature. Patrick Drury plays Pastor Manders with exaggerated tightness, motionless from the neck down and jumping away at the merest approach of a female.  Manders is a complicated figure to bring across in the 21st century – the moral norm of Ibsen’s time, his beliefs are now comically priggish, dogmatic and self-serving.  Drury adds nothing to this unsympathetic exterior.  Ultimately we can only laugh disbelievingly at him, never considering him to be as trapped in lies and self-deceit as those he condemns. 

Florence Hall as Regina and Pip Donaghy as Jacob are similarly affected, a strange conglomeration of Scottish and Northern accents playing havoc every time they speak.  What kind of geographical or political point this is meant to establish remains extremely unclear. Hall’s entire emotional credibility is hampered, as the falsity of her voice overshadows the brittle fracturing of Regina’s bright exterior.

Mrs Alving should be the riveting centre of the play, a character entombed in the false life she has so assiduously created and fed to the public.  Ibsen identified her as an older Nora from A Doll’s House, but one who never escaped, who never shut the door on husband and children.  However Kelly Hunter overacts the tragedy of her character to absurd effect, filling each moment with extravagant gestures, preceding each word with a farcically long dramatic pause. As the play builds up towards its climax, Hunter’s technique to convey tension is simply to elongate these pauses.  By the end she manages to reach a chant-like state, intoning her words with agonisingly exaggerated import.  Coupled with the strange use of music – banally sentimental melody between scenes, one violently deafening chord at the end – any hint of subtlety at the characters’ fates is completely undermined.

All of which is a shame, as the one truly gripping presence throughout is Mark Quartley’s Oswald. From the moment he appears on stage, dragging himself around in a mixture of affected worldliness and real undisguisable physical and mental torture, Quartley embodies Oswald from within his feverish core. His split between vulnerability and repulsiveness inspires us to recoil from him, while at the same time overwhelming us with a shared sense of futile despair.  Where he is silent, his contorted frame, wracked with inborn illness and shame, speaks volumes.  This is a character who could have walked straight out of Munch’s pictures, and whose muted screams reach out of this dated production, right into the heart of modernity.          

Ghosts was performed by the English Touring Theatre – see their website for more information about upcoming productions