‘Nightfright: The Nightmare of Your Life’
I do not know what happened yesterday but someone in Worthing Theatres felt that it was ok to take £34 off me for a subpar performance of a very shoddily written ‘thriller’ that would have even made the worst amateur company look like professional actors. Now, whether or not this was because it was a matinee, I do not know but it was a show that felt like nobody on stage really cared about the product they were presenting to the audience.
I should probably restart and explain that yesterday, the 22nd of May 2010, LibraryGirl and myself attended the matinee performance of ‘Night Fright: The Nightmare of Your Life’ presented by Ian Dickens Productions. We went along after looking at the poster and deciding we wanted to see a horror/thriller as we hadn’t seen one before and thought it could be interesting. After all when a poster claims it to be ‘The Nightmare of Your Life’ you assume it is going to be scary, unless of course it is written by Roger S Moss. This play isn’t scary, it isn’t a thriller and it definitely is not a comedy despite trying desperately hard. This play has a very big identity problem in that despite sounding like a horror/mystery/thriller it seems to be trying to dip its finger in about 4 different genres and failing miserably at all 4. It is to date Roger S Moss’s only play and sadly you would be able to tell why if you too had been subjected to this mess of a play.
Now, because the play itself is a huge mess it makes the direction of such a mess a minefield, after all how do you direct a play with an identity crisis? Of course bad source material is not an excuse for bad directing but a closer look at the programme notes that it is directed by Chris Moreno, the man responsible for Buddy on the West End, Ian Dickens and assistant director David North. So perhaps it is a case of too many cooks giving the actors too many conflicting messages? Well the problems with this production are so baffling that who truly knows? All I know is that the show seemed to be suffering from some pretty big glitches after promising oh so much. From the massive posters all over the Worthing Area that looked like this:
To the wonderful programme which featured not just one but two articles on thrillers and horrors both in Cinema and the Theatre. It all read brilliantly and as I said before the programme said that this Ian Dickens Production was directed by Ian Dickens himself which made me confident that this was going to be a quality piece of theatre…
Let’s get to the first scene:
So, the lights go up and the curtain rises to a very good-looking set which causes both me and LibraryGirl to smile at each other in anticipation of what is sure to be a good production. I have to say that the aesthetic of the set is quite brilliant-looking and the designers David North and Alan Miller Bunford have done a good job creating the idea of a spacious chapel made into a one bedroom home. The characters enter and the two potential tenants looking over the property seem quite normal but there is a serious feeling of over playing from Dianne Nicks who is playing Miss Peterson. Later in the play this makes sense but for the moment it is a bit weird and I wonder why she has been directed to act so over the top like a caricature.
Back to the performance, as the first big problem occurs when the male lead, Frank Gilman, ably played by Neil Roberts, heads up the staircase and the banister wobbles precariously as if its about to fall off. Now this instantly takes me out of the moment and makes me feel really odd, I understand that with a touring piece the set needs to come apart quickly and be reassembled and there may have been an issue and it could have broken etc but it still looks bad because it wobbles all over the place. This of course drew my focus to the stairs and you could see all the scuff marks that made the stairs look like set and that the paint was coming off. I will reiterate that this is because it’s a touring production and retouching the set every day is probably not high on the agenda as it might be a waste but marred by the already wobbly set I was starting to worry about what I had forked out my money for. Then there is the chaos and idiocy of the front door. You could make a complete episode of ‘You’ve Been Framed’ from the many different problems it causes. Firstly there is the original idea that the door gets stuck and will not open which seems to be remembered when it is written in the script and then forgotten as unimportant throughout the rest of the play. The trick apparently is that you’re supposed to give the bottom of the door a little kick and it would suddenly open, this was reinforced by both Dianne Nicks and David Callister whenever they were on stage but the two leads seemed to forget this. This lack of attention to detail was not just a simple case of being part of the play, after all, there is a large chunk of the script taken up by viewing the house and getting it ready for occupancy yet these glaring errors were never commented on by the actors. As I said Neil Roberts who plays the lead Frank Gilman is quite engaging and commands the stage powerfully, however his female lead Helen George is underwhelming and more than a little annoying. With a voice that stays on one level throughout barely concealing the boredom and attitude that screams ‘This isn’t important, I don’t want to be here’. As the first scene went on I felt like I was being fed the beginning of a cannibal storyline in the same vein as the short Hammer Horror stories from the ‘Tales from the Crypt’ films of the 70s. It felt good but cheesy but this was because the pace was so fast, not because of the script but the rushed acting, that I couldn’t catch every detail. Then the scene ended and the curtain came down for the change over and I thought ‘oh wow what are they doing to change the set?’ and then the curtain went back up and it was movement of a few cushions and that was it. That was all-it took over a minute to change the cushions and remove a couple of items of clothing! This completely cut into the timing of the show and stopped any possible tension build, something which the programme had told us was imperative to this genre of theatre.
Scene 2 took us from Horror/Thriller territory as the couple moved in, to sex comedy territory as the now married couple go through the stereotypical innuendos that had us both cringing. Not helped by the fact that there was no chemistry between the two leads it just came across badly, I got the distinct feeling that the material was below the actors onstage. This scene at the very beginning though did give the one scary moment of the whole show, yes that is right the only scary moment in this entire horror happens about 15 minutes in and that is your lot for fear. We also got introduced to the character of Mr Watson played by David Callister and then Joanne Heywood as Jacqui. Both came on and played very well, Callister in particular playing a great slimy estate agent. Heywood’s Jacqui was vampish and overtly sexual but suffered from the same problem that haunted Helen George that she seemed like she didn’t really want to be there.
Scene 3 introduced the last character to us, the gardener Mr Harvey played by Henry Cormas who was dressed in a terrible costume with an awful fake beard. His diction was appalling, I don’t know if the script asked for it but we couldn’t tell what he was going on about it just sounded like Cornish mumbling. It didn’t further the storyline because it was incoherent, it was interspersed with bad jokes and a moment that was supposed to be chilling and frightening but just came across as bad pantomime acting.
When the curtain went down on the first act I was slightly tempted to ask LibraryGirl to follow me to the box office so I could ask for a refund but a) I wanted to genuinely see if it would get better and b) I don’t think they would have given me my money back. All I could do is hope that after the interval things would get better.
They didn’t, in fact they got worse and as flimsy plot point after flimsy plot point attacked me I got more and more bored until I gave up and just watched without trying to grasp the shows inane plot. I won’t spoil the plot for anyone crazy enough to pay for tickets to this show but it does have a lot of holes and things get easily forgotten and come across as confusing. In fact I put a part of this blame on the Direction because some bright spark at Ian Dickens decided that this four person play should have six actors… excuse me? Six actors for four roles is madness. It is made obvious how in the final scene and it just put the cherry on top of this messy cake of a show. Then, despite there being 6 actors, only four are allowed to take a bow and the other two are left off stage as afterthoughts. This second half is more of a mess than the first half and contains none of the supposed suspense a thriller is meant to have. The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is the mystery in this show is explained away so quickly that I doubt the whole audience had time to process it before the final bit of action happened and the lights went down. The ending had actually been written quite well but the direction and acting turned it into a very bad Keystone Films sequence heightened by the fact that the majority of the audience was laughing at the absurdity of the action.
This show suffered from having a hole ridden plot, a married couple with zero charisma or chemistry, bad direction, flimsy sets, terrible jokes (at one point they mentioned Worthing in reference to a restaurant bill which was supposed to be funny but you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium), bad acting and so many other things it just made it one big mess.
In conclusion this show was a waste of money and time. I seriously have to ask whether Ian Dickens Productions put on this show just to make money from another tour or did they actually believe in the show they produced? If it’s the prior, fine but have a bit more pride in your work after all whilst not all plays are supposed to be artistic they should all at least entertain. If it’s the latter then they need to talk to the cast and tour directors because the show I saw I cannot believe was the actors giving even 10% of the talent or enthusiasm they have. It is a real shame my first even chance to see this production company’s work was so poor but it will not put me off watching their work again. I am going to give Ian Dickens another chance as he constantly brings shows to Worthing and the future ones look good. Plus at only £17 per ticket to a Matinee its not too bad a price for a professional show, except on this one occasion.
