By David Fairs

Featuring David Fairs, Conor O’Kane, Zena Carswell

Golem! Theatre, at The Vault Festival

January 24-28, 2018

The Fallen Tyrant, The Hollow Hero, The Spectral Queen – three characters’ lives enmeshed together in a stone-walled cell… but where is Kate?

Golem! Theatre’s latest mutation of Shakespearean texts – following on from Macbeths and I Know of You – takes their use of the Bard one step further, with David Fairs’ script creating new characters who speak lines taken from across 16 plays (adapted as required in terms of gender etc.) blending them with the works of Kate Bush to provide a challenging and disturbing hour. There’s definite echoes of Hannibal Lecter’s relationship with Will Graham (think Manhunter/the Hannibal TV series, rather than Silence of the Lambs) in the early part, as the Hollow Hero comes to seek advice from the haunted Fallen Tyrant, and you watch as the balance of power shifts between them as the former seems to become increasingly unhinged. And how much is that to do with the presence of a ghostly female form whom, it seems, only the Fallen Tyrant can see? And what will that form do to gain corporeal existence?

There are a number of tonal shifts within the play – not least created when the influence of Kate (is that Kate Bush, or another ’Cate?) increases, culminating in a musical duet that reinterprets Bush’s work  as much as it does Shakespeare… which leads to a key sequence that blends sonnets and exorcism in a new way.

The Vault’s Cavern room works well for this and director Anna Marsland uses it to good effect, combined with a very encompassing sound design that changes the ever-present trains (the Vault being near Waterloo Station) into a darker, more life-connected presence. There’s strong performances from all three actors, particularly in the scenes where they are possessed, and where they’re delivering lines that must be as familiar to them as the audience but in completely different contexts. My only minor problem was with the second “musical” portion where it was nigh on impossible to hear what the actors were saying in counterpoint to the music.

Verdict: There are a couple of moments where the use of “contemporary” lyrics jars perhaps more than intended, but Fairs’ script and the production draw on themes within Shakespeare and Bush to create something that stands firmly as its own entity. 8/10

Paul Simpson

Tomorrow Creeps continues till Sunday 28th, with a matinee on 27th. Full details here

Read our interview with David Fairs and Anna Marsland here