Review: The Turn of the Screw, Arcola Theatre
Review: The Turn of the Screw, Arcola Theatre
By Sara Colohan
Horror is not my genre, by a long chalk. These days I struggle to sit through a tense car chase on television, let alone brace for the kind of chilling moments a ghost story promises. I went into Blackeyed Theatre and Arcola Theatre’s production of The Turn of the Screw prepared to make a quiet exit if it got the better of me — seated firmly within reach of the door, just in case.
Add to that a general resistance to plays about children, and the odds were stacked against me enjoying this one at all.
The story began life in 1898 as a novella by Henry James, and its central ambiguity has kept audiences arguing ever since: is the Governess seeing genuine ghosts, or is she unravelling? That’s presumably why it keeps being adapted: most famously as the 1961 film The Innocents, starring Deborah Kerr, alongside countless stage and screen versions since, each one free to lean harder into horror or psychology as it sees fit. Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s version for Blackeyed Theatre and Arcola Theatre, directed by Nicky Allpress, keeps that ambiguity fully intact.
I was won over almost immediately, largely down to Amy Tara’s performance as the Governess. She holds the stage, and the audience’s focus, for a solid 40 minutes of unbroken first-half stage time, never leaving our sight for the entire play. That is no small feat in Arcola’s Studio One, a genuinely blank canvas of a space with no backstage as such, and nowhere to hide once you’re on, with audience on three sides of the cubed space. Every choice an actor makes is visible, and Tara carries the exposure with an elegant, commanding presence.
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Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s adaptation has a small cast of five, plus a ghost. Grown-ups Toby Beynon and Kathleen McAuley-Irvine play both the children and the ghosts that may or may not be haunting them. The ‘children’ were eerie and strange in all the right ways and unsettling without tipping into cliché, which is no easy thing to do. Adults playing children is often problematic, but these two were very well cast.
Katy Slater’s Mrs Grose was intriguing: a woman keeping her cards close to her chest throughout, and a good contrast to the elegant, vulnerable openness of Tara’s Governess. It’s a strong performance, and the two women’s differing temperaments do a lot of the play’s unspoken work.
Where the production lost me slightly was in its sound design. I spent years working in theatre and DJing in clubs, so I have no quarrel with volume for its own sake, but several of the shock effects like the sudden bangs, high-pitched shrieks — were less startling than physically painful. I understand the instinct to shock and unsettle an audience, but there’s a difference between a well-timed jolt and an assault on the eardrums. I felt a little less volume would have gone a long way.
Praise must go to the lighting designer Oliver McNally as it felt faultless. It’s imaginative throughout, and the first act closes on what I can only describe as an artistic high — a moment that lands with real style, sending us into the interval on a strong sense of unease.
By the second half, Tara’s performance was riveting enough to keep me watching regardless of whether I could follow every thread. Incredibly, she held the stage for the entire second half too.
Given how unlikely a candidate I was for this production — no appetite for horror, no particular fondness for stories centred on children — I enjoyed it far more than I expected to. That’s due in no small part to the talented Amy Tara, whose commitment and presence anchor the whole production. If you’re similarly wary of the genre, don’t let that put you off; this is more about atmosphere and performance than jump-scares, ear-splitting sound effects notwithstanding.
- Arcola Theatre, E8, until 10 October.
