Shallow Grave

at the Old Fire Station 'til Saturday

How do you transfer gruesome and graphic dismemberment from the screen to the stage? Difficult in the case of Shallow Grave. As a story the essence of which is the gradual conversion of three ordinary people into cold-blooded murderers, the explicit nature of the action is central to the plot, which must juxtapose banal normality with shocking brutality. This production proved the difficulty of the task. While the scenery was well-judged and realistic - your average city pad complete with colourful sofas, leopard skin cushions and twenty-something professionals - the use of this one set as the background to the entire performance was, although perhaps necessary, somewhat contradictory to the darkness of some of the scenes. Hacking off limbs in a well-lit living room is hardly the same as in the depths of a dark forest after all, and the revolting dismemberment that is so central to the story lapsed into the un-chilling realms of the unconvincing. Using the space in front of the stage as the loft was a good idea in theory, but surely the truly sinister nature of the situation would have been better conveyed by having David crouched intimidatingly above the stage in the ideally postioned gallery, one thing The Old Fire Station can provide. For the people further up in the audience too, the action below the stage was sometimes blocked by peoples' heads. Not good. The acting makes up, to some extent, for the faults in the staging. Richard Hough is a witty and very caustic Alex, successfully conveying the subtle transformation of bully into victim. Sarcastic bravado gives way to simple fear as he realises the treachery of his friends, and this character who seems the least innocent at the beginning becomes the most human by the end. Juliet (Abigail-Fielding-Smith) is convincingly normal, although slightly self-conscious, but is not quite as manipulative as the character is required to be. Her relationship with her two flatmates needs to have more flare, for we have no sense of the undertones of repressed desire running below the friendships . David (Jeff Glekin) has a wonderful accent, and glowers with a certain sinister moodiness which counteracts the apparent ordinariness of his role as a chartered accountant. All three actors were somewhat limited by the medium, but functioned as the inseparable, deeply claustrophobic threesome with well-intentioned conviction. However, their initial reaction to the dead body falling out of the spare bedroom is somewhat blasé and self-conscious, destroying what should be a disturbing encounter and making it insignificant. Something that mustn't be forgotten is the striking sound effect, which emerges at any hint of a wicked intention. It is delightfully splodgy and gruesome, and makes you want to go and find someone to turn it off. Yuk...

Joshua M. Lint