A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS

Roger Lloyd Parry at the Cramphorn

17.01.10

This pair of M R James stories completes Nunkie Theatre Company's ghostly trilogy. Art Historian extraordinaire Roger Lloyd Parry has said that this will be his last such tour - “at least in this lifetime”.

We shall miss him. The format is simple – the bookish study of a garrulous academic, lit only by a few candles. A vague shape behind the armchair, only a coatstand, surely. And with the candlelight come shadows, just as deep and mysterious as those in the Provost's room in King's where these stories were first told.

Aldeburgh – thinly disguised as Seaburgh – is the setting for the title story, in which a young archaeologist foolishly braves the guardians of the ancient crowns of Anglia. The climax, with mist, Martello Tower and skeletal footprints was chilling indeed.

In “Lost Hearts”, the mood is menacing and melancholy. A country house, not unlike Henry James's Bly, two ghostly children, ancient black magic, and the various characters all cleverly suggested by the story-teller's art. I was sorry we didn't have the smell of the incense, though.

Lloyd Parry's skill lies in drawing us affably into this world of apparitions, making M R James's words sound new-minted in the warm Christmas Eve candlelight.

A PLEASING TERROR

Nunkie Theatre Company at the Cramphorn

18.01.09

Robert Lloyd Parry is the epitome of M R James's “Cambridge man”. We discover him in his dimly lit rooms – chiaroscuro of which Caravaggio would be proud – stooped and shrouded in his wing chair. Open tomes lie tumbled at his feet. In the distance, the chapel choir sings Evensong.

But as soon as he emerges from his decongestant cure, his restless form engages us in the author's first essay in the supernatural, Canon Alberic's Scrapbook. Glasses glinting in the candlelight, he embodies the nervous sacristan and the curious Englishman, and uncannily evokes the night monsters as the candles are extinguished one by one.

This story is linked to the more famous Mezzotint – the tale of a poor engraving of an Essex Manor House which eerily plays out the tragic events leading to the death of a child, the last of the Anningley line.

Making good use of his profile and his eloquent hands, Lloyd Parry manages to involve every member of the audience in a performance which is intimate and almost improvised, though remarkably faithful to these hundred-year-old texts. And like the Professor of Morphology in the first story, we may scarcely dare to put out the light before going to sleep.