Don't Look Now - Review

New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

***

 

Adapted by Nell Leyshon

From the story by Daphne du Maurier

Directed by Douglas Rintoul

Evie Marlow

Don’t Look Now is a tough story to translate to the stage. It is a tale of the rawest emotional cruelty, as we find leading characters John and Laura trying to come to terms with the recent loss of their five year-old daughter Christine to meningitis. That the story is set in Venice, against a backdrop of psychic phenomena and a serial killer on the loose, only adds to the challenges facing the show’s creative team.

Daphne du Maurier crafted her yarn perfectly, paying perfect respect to John and Laura’s unimaginable grief. In a compellingly scary tale, she wove the returning spirit of Christine into her parents’ Venetian stay via two sisters, one a blind medium, whose paths frequently and coincidentally collide with the grieving couple’s in the city’s restaurants and cathedrals.

Perhaps the biggest horror story of the night is Nell Leyshon's creaking adaptation. For while the script bears a resemblance to the du Maurier's original in its plotline, the dialogue on offer is a disappointment. The incredibly sensitive subject of the loss of a child is tackled addressed with far less care than is merited. To condense the work of a genius into a one-act 100minute thriller requires writing and acting skills of the highest quality. Sadly, Douglas Rintoul directs a cliched take on the original which, for all his cast’s good intentions, barely rises beyond melodrama.

Mark Jackson and Sophie Robinson play the bereaved parents, as Alex Bulmer plays the medium and Olivia Carruthers her sister. All put in solid performances, together with the excellent young Evie Marlow whose Christine is spookily fun. But for any story’s suspense to truly work, let alone a horror story, its first requirement has to be to suspend our disbelief. Sadly such suspension is patchy at best and while the story’s bloody climax offers a moderately satisfying dose of gore, it’s a long time to wait for a slashed splash of stage blood.

There’s a modicum of Halloween horror to be enjoyed in Don’t Look Now. Just don’t look to set your expectations too high and you won’t be disappointed.

Runs until 25th October then on tour

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan