Red Rope Theatre Company is back in the Anglican Chapel at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, this time with its own adaptation of the chilling Edgar Allan Poe classic, The Fall of the House of Usher.
Writer Matt Grinter brings a fresh adaptation to this spine-tingling tale. Grinter injects the narrator fully into the storyline and provides an intriguingly sinister back-story to the miseries of the cursed Usher family. At the same time, he keeps the Gothic horror and tension of the original. It is a rewarding and satisfyingly successful approach.
Red Rope has some form in staging productions at this hugely evocative setting, and once again the venue can claim to be one of the stars of the show. Low-level lights from the undergrowth illuminate the approach to the Victorian columned entrance porch. Once inside, candles around the altar area produce flickering shadows across the walls and ceiling of the chapel. The bells of the chapel call us in to our seats as haunting piano music plays quietly in the background. The unsettling and eerie effect sets the atmosphere of the ominous story to follow.
What is beginning to look like becoming a regular Red Rope team, Patrick McAndrew, Rebecca Robson and Danann McAleer, make up the tiny cast playing the narrator Edgar and Usher siblings, Madeleine and Roderick. Each brings their own strengths to their role. McAndrew becomes more pale and haunted as the hysteria of his old friend starts to eat away at his own sense of sanity. The almost ethereal Robson seems to be barely alive until she, shockingly, comes back from the dead. Danann McAleer has some heavy lifting to do. Full of nervous anxiety at the start, this rapidly degenerates into a terrifying fear, unable to free himself from the ominous forces that bind him and his family to the house.
Sharp direction from Roisin McCay-Hines maintains the suspense throughout the evening despite the almost complete absence of any form of staging. The style of the model house seems curiously at odds with the era of the novel, which is slightly distracting. It may be harsh for such a necessarily stripped-back production, but it feels like a missed opportunity to have such an inanimate prop so prominent given its horrific role at the centre of the Usher family's descent into horrifying madness. The precisely timed effects from Lydia Morgan (lighting) and Oliver Thomas (sound) are electrifying, however.
Once again, the lack of raked seating or an elevated platform for the performers has its frustrations for those not in the best seats. But it would be a shame to detract from the achievements of the production team, and this can at least be partially offset by the intimacy of a small audience in such an atmospheric venue.