The Shadows Speak @ 100 Seel Street

Presented by The Alligator Club
Fri 30th Nov - Sun 2nd Dec 2012
Curated by Lizzie Nunnery and Joe Ward Munrow
Directed by Hannah-Tyrell-Pinder
Written by Ella Greenhill, Lizzie Nunnery, Jeff Young and Joe Ward Munrow

Reviewed by Colin Serjent

This was a darkly atmospheric and spooky journey through a dilapidated Georgian house based in Liverpool city centre.

A promenade experience took people (numbering around a dozen) on an exploration of the different rooms of the building. They sampled poetry, eerie recorded soundscapes, disembodied voices, music and a lot of candle lighting!

The group were first led into a scruffy bedroom where a speechless actor motioned certain individuals, including myself, to partake in tea and biscuits. He then looked mournfully out of the window.

We then encountered a woman wearing a red dressing gown in a second room, seemingly in torment about the loss of her young child, and apparently in desperate need of affection.

Having climbed the stairs the group stepped into a third room, as if passing back in time to the Second World War period. with Glen Miller music in the background. A woman danced ineptly with the wordless actor.

The apparent father of him then strode into the space, aggressively urging him to speak.

The mute actor proceeded to take us to a fourth room where a woman dressed in a ghostly white costume stood in a corner. She bemoaned her fate, perhaps because she was a member of the living dead. She looked trapped in what appeared to be mass strands of hair.

The wordless actor had still not uttered a syllable. The final room we trooped into contained woman holding a lit candle, with the wordless actor pleading with her, through his body language, but still not uttering a word.

Finally we moved into the back garden of the house. The actor then broke his silence while looking up at the window, where the woman with the candle stood, asking her to help him.

It was a very strange, and for some of the audience an unsettling theatre piece, but nevertheless very memorable.

Printer friendly page

Sorry Comments Closed