based upon the novel
and film by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Black Swan State Theatre
Company
Director Clare Watson
Set and costume
designer Bruce Mckinven
Lighting designer Richard
Vabre
Composer and sound
designer Rachael Dease
Featuring Sophia
Forrest, Stuart Halusz, Ian Michael, Rory O’Keeffe, Clarence Ryan, Maitland
Schnaars, Steve Turner and Alison van Reeken
Heath Ledger Theatre
Until December 3
During the transition, Watson has gained the trust and
friendship of Perth’s theatre community, and, as her much-anticipated 2018
season demonstrates, her board and Black Swan’s sometimes tricksy and disparate
stakeholders.
But can she deliver in her own right as the director
of a whopping main stage production in the signature theatre of her new town?
Well, as we have just discovered, 61.9% is the new benchmark for overwhelming
success, and Watson’s splendidly executed and often downright thrilling Let the
Right One In does way, way better than that.
We didn’t need to wait long for those thrills to start.
The first sights and sounds – Blue Oyster Cult’s smashing Don’t Fear The Reaper
(just the opening salvo of Rachael Dease’s soundtrack of 1980’s hits and her
own haunting compositions), and Bruce Mckinven’s Rubik’s Cube of a set,
animated by Richard Vabre’s lighting and Michael Carmody’s projections, set the
senses racing, and the first scenes, an ominous voice-overed narration and, not
long after, a bloodlettingly brutal murder, set the nerves on edge.
So, within minutes, it’s apparent that Watson knows
her stuff and recruits her staff wisely. Within a few more it’s obvious she has
cast just as astutely – and, in the case of her two young leads, with some
inspiration.
The business in and
around Mckinven’s cube by the cast, supported by Claudia Blagaich and Meabh
Walton’s stage management, is adeptly paced, and Rohin Best and Tim Collins’s
sound operation is of exemplary clarity and quality.
In such good hands, Jack Thorne’s adaptation of John
Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel and screenplay could hardly go wrong.
As much young romance
and teen revenge tale as horror, Lindqvist’s story exposes the unpreparedness
of smug, well-ordered suburban society to deal with that which lies beneath and
beyond – be it phantasmagorical or all-too-human (as Edgar Cooke and the Burnies
have shown us).
Which makes Let the
Right One at its heart a grim tale, and Watson is wise to take it seriously.
Sure the final flight of the young ill-matched lovers, the boy Oskar (Ian
Michael) and the undead Eli (Sophia Forrest) after the destruction of their
pursuers and tormentors has a redemptive quality, but the drained corpses they
leave behind, and the hunger that will never leave Eli, are not a good fit for
cartoon treatment.
Rather like Michael
Lehmann’s ’80s cult classic Heathers (there’s something about that decade) it
pays to play things straight, even when Eli is wrapped around her victims’
heads like an octopus and doing some extremely unwelcome necking (movement
director Claudia Alessi and fight director Andy Fraser are kept busy
throughout).
Rory OKeeffe and
Clarence Ryan as the school bullies who make Oskar’s life hell are deliciously
odious and ripe for come-uppance, while the seasoned core of the cast, Stuart
Halutsz, Maitland Schnaars, Steve Turner and Alison van Reeken are exceptional without
exception.
I understand that a
vampire can only come in if invited, and Sophia Forrest’s Eli is certainly the
right one. Tough and sexy, needy and very scary, she clambers over this play –
and its set – with remarkable surety and athleticism. Ian Michael’s singular
quality shines again here. He makes Oskar vulnerable, complex and surprising,
and shows that weakness, like beauty, is only skin deep.
Let the Right One In
is a mightily auspicious start for Clare Watson and the new phase of what is
now her State Theatre Company.
Don’t miss it.
No comments:
Post a Comment