Turn of the Screw

Gothic fiction is having a moment right now. Think creaking houses, creepy glass-eyed taxidermy and ghostly apparitions at windows. Modern writers have jumped on this deliciously dark, historic genre and in so doing have introduced a new generation of readers to Gothic gloom.

This may account for the impressive numbers of younger audience members for the stage adaptation of Henry James’s Turn of the Screw at Perth Concert Hall last Wednesday. Or maybe it’s just that even over a century on, we can’t get enough of this critically acclaimed 1898 horror novella. With all the tricks directors can use to fright audiences with nowadays, somehow there’s nothing quite like the good old fashioned scare of whether those ghosts are real or imagined?

There’s nothing quite like the good old fashioned scare. 

Steeped in suspense, the chilling story of a governess who takes charge of two young orphans Miles and Flora at Bly, a country manor where everything is not as it seems, Turn of the Screw has over the decades, continued to bring the fright in its reinventions on stage and screen and director Daniel Buckroyd’s production doesn’t disappoint.

Sara Perks’s gloriously unhinged set is impressive and tone-setting. Enormous stone columns loom ominously at jaunty angles and the four actors work creatively with a smattering of furniture, some dust sheets and of course, a creepy-as rocking horse.

In Tim Luscombe’s adaptation, the play begins with Janet Dibley’s troubled Governess being forced to revisit events at Bly years later by Amy Dunn’s Mrs Conray, the now adult Flora who demands to know what became of her brother.

What follows is a superb leap-out-of-your-seat and watch-you-don’t-spill-your-wine thriller as the narrative weaves dizzily backwards and forwards in time. Bewitched by the charms of the orphans’ mysterious uncle, played capably by Elliot Burton, the Governess agrees to take on the position at Bly but soon learns of the catalogue of misfortune and death which has befallen others at the house.

She begins to see ghosts of deceased employees Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and learns from Maggie McCarthy’s brilliantly handled Mrs Grose the housekeeper that the two had been lovers and were close to the children. She fears Miles and Flora have been possessed by these 'Others' but her frenzied attempts to extract confessions from them only plunge her deeper into self-obsession.

Eroticism breathes heavily over the production but it’s a skin-crawling, uncomfortable kind which feeds the impending sense of doom. We witness the Governess being deftly seduced into taking the job and the desire to please her employer is fuelled as much by obsession with him as it is a willingness to care for her charges. We become uncomfortably privy to the disturbing chemistry between her and young Miles – a lingering touch here, a kiss on the mouth there.

GALLERY

Here Burton and Dunn playing multiple roles is clever and the interchangeable nature of their characters generates unease while hinting at the chaos in the Governess’s mind. Is Miles really kissing her like that or is she imagining his uncle? As the children reenact a scene from a play, Miles climbs on top of his sister and it is an unnerving echo from an earlier scene with Peter Quint and Miss Jessel.

And when the Governess is visited by Peter Quint’s ghost, she appears to open herself up to him, seemingly craving his touch.

Yes, this is a play full of haunting – either real or imagined - but more disturbing is the Governess’s steely conviction - in the existence of the ghosts she has seen and to her sense of duty – to protect the children as promised to their uncle. “If he is safe, I am safe,” she mutters. But through her unwavering conviction, she becomes the one to be most feared.

The unanswered question reverberates menacingly long after the audience walk out the theatre doors.

Nowhere is this more evident than at the play’s conclusion when following a violent exchange, Miles dies in her arms while being forced to face the ghost. Did seeing it kill him? Or did she strangle him? Mrs Conray insists mournfully that her brother was innocent all along and finally the Governess faces the unthinkable truth, whispering simply “If he is guiltless…,” before the stage turns black. She doesn’t answer her own question but the weight of it reverberates menacingly long after the audience walk out the theatre doors.

The re-imagining of this much loved story with its superb lighting and sound is heavy on the thrills and chills (at any moment I could be found perched on the edge of my seat or jumping out of my skin) but they aren’t cheap. The careful subtleties and nuances guide a deeply thought-provoking production rounded out by a gifted cast.