James Nicholas takes the stage in this one-man adaptation of one of Dickens's less well-known ghost stories. In the play, a middle-aged writer on the precipice of divorce has gone to the country to muse over the best way to break with his wife of many years and deal with the backlash over taking a far younger lover. Arriving at his hotel, he finds himself confronted by a strange and sinister old man, who regales him with a long and sordid story of greed, murder and cruelty.
The Hanged Man’s Bride is a fine and fitting choice for the Fringe, opening with wry comedy at the start and building more and more into a dark and unsavoury tale of doom and death. Nicholas spins out the story of the distracted writer, pondering his romantic situation over a bout of brewing fever until confronted by the strangeness of his situation, then switching gears, gait and accent to tell the story within a story as the old man.
It’s a solid performance and shows Nicholas’s range and ability to spool out a yarn while drawing his audience in. Considering this is a nested narrative, it’s easy to start to forget the framing story once in the midst of the swing of things. Indeed, the audience began clapping in earnest at the wrong moment, after a slightly too long lighting change led them to believe the play had ended.
There is an issue that the comedic aspects of the piece aren’t quite as strong as they could be at the beginning. Despite the opening jaunty music setting the slightly tongue-in-cheek tone, the first few laughs were nervous and self-conscious rather than the more hearty and relieved ones towards the end. But it’s still an enjoyable piece of dark storytelling, and an hour spent exploring the depths of greed and cruelty.