M R JAMES GHOST STORIES
Nunkie
Productions at the Cramphorn Theatre, Chelmsford
19.11.13
We've
forgotten the power of candlelight to chill and to enchant.
This
simple, potent device is exploited by R M Lloyd Parry, whose one-man
storytelling shows recreate the King's Cambridge room where M R James
[to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance] first told his classic
stories of the supernatural.
The
simple staging, most of it in deep, eerie shadow, allows us to
concentrate on the words; each story sounds fresh and spontaneous, as
if we had been invited to listen to it for the first time of telling.
The
Ash Tree is a creepy tale of witches and revenge, which takes place
around the Suffolk country house of Castringham Hall. Lloyd Parry,
candlelight glistening on his spectacles, economically suggests
glimpsing the creature, finding the corpse, opening the coffin. And
the counter-tenor and lute – Black Is The Colour – is an inspired
choice of music to set the mood.
The
second story, also set in East Anglia, is the more famous Whistle and
I'll Come to You, a more subtle, far scarier affair altogether, with
golf and archaeology on the Suffolk coast as a background to the
terror.
A
tour-de-force of the story-teller's
art, and I'd certainly travel to hear him again, perhaps in a
more
suitably spooky setting. Hemingford
Grey, maybe, or Suffolk's Otley Hall, or the Leper Chapel in
Cambridge ...
photograph by Ruth Horry
