Charles Dickens’ The Haunting, Staircase, Wild Life

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on CHARLES DICKENS’ THE HAUNTING at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, STAIRCASE at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, and WILD LIFE at Cumbernauld Theatre and on tour, for Scotsman Arts, 3.3.11
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Charles Dickens’ The Haunting 3 stars ***
Staircase 3 stars ***
Wild Life 4 stars ****

IF EVER YOU WANTED an object lesson in the sheer diversity or fragmentation of the Scottish theatre scene, then this is the week to treck round the nation’s stages, pondering the sheer confusion of expectations that cluster round this most ancient of art-forms. The King’s in Edinburgh, for example, is attracting packed audiences to the kind of touring show that would have been dead and gone half a century ago, if critics like Kenneth Tynan had had their way. Charles Dickens’ The Haunting is a classic Loamshire play, part Dickensian ghost story, part Agatha Christie thriller, and placed in the archetypal setting of a room with a French window in an English country house, populated by characters with jolly good accents. It represents a type of theatre that has not changed in almost a century; and its style is so old-fashioned that it can only survive by sending itself up, a little.

Yet for many people – perhaps most, in Britain – this kind of nostalgia-trip is exactly what they associate with theatre, and what they want from it; and in times like these, those reassuring qualities are not to be sneezed at, particularly when – as in this case – the company do their level best to deliver high professional standards, and a good night out. Adapted by Hugh Janes from ghost stories by Charles Dickens, the show is a piece of high-class hokum for a cast of two, plus ghost. Paul Nicholas is stately as Lord Gray, the aristocratic rogue who owns the haunted house, while Charlie Clements – once Bradley in Eastenders – is outstanding as the young chap, David, who arrives from London to catalogue the library, carrying secrets of his own; and there’s an icy post-modern twist in the tail, suggesting that instead of finishing in a neat narrative arc, David’s nightmare is only just beginning, and may continue, without end.

Whatever you make of shows like The Haunting, in other words, theatricality is not their problem. The Haunting revels in the old-fashioned power of simple theatrical tricks, and basks in the shrieks and gasps of an audience that is clearly part of the event; whereas a more serious show like the Tron Theatre’s current production of Charles Dyer’s The Staircase – directed by and starring the Tron’s inimitable boss, Andy Arnold – sometimes seems more like a radio play than a piece of theatre, a fascinating social document that often struggles to hold the attention, despite a fine basic theme.

First seen in London in 1966, Staircase has scarcely been performed since, despite its status as one of the first British plays to focus directly on a gay relationship. Set in a barber shop in the East End of London, the play features a long night of crisis in the relationship between Charlie and Harry, two ageing men who have lived and worked together for years, without ever fully acknowledging the relationship, to others or to themselves. Harry, played with great sensitivity by Benny Young, is the more camp and the more “out” of the two. Harry, though – well caught by Andy Arnold, in a complex performance – is a more butch figure, who once fathered a daughter during a brief marriage; and it’s an imminent visit from this girl, now 20, that fuels a long, relentless and cruel conversation between the couple, driven by the closeted barrenness of a gay relationships in an age when they were never allowed to put down social and family roots.

Add a twist of doubt about the very business of identity, and the multiple roles we play, and we seem as close to the world of Pirandello or Sartre as to that of Dyer’s English contemporaries, Harold Pinter and Joe Orton. In the end, though, for all the potential of the text, Arnold’s Tron Stripped production boils down to two old guys in a room exchanging bitter and often quite repetitive thoughts about the bloody misery of growing old; and although those with a special interest in the subject may be drawn to the show, it never explores the wilder theatrical potential of the text in a way that would excite a less committed audience.

Pamela Carter’s Wild Life – the new touring show from Nicholas Bone’s Magnetic North company – also features a 75-minute dialogue between a barren couple, and invites questions about the context in which it appears; but here, the story is slightly more dramatic, the setting more vivid, and the acting more driven and physically dynamic. Like many young middle-class couples in contemporary British drama, Daisy and Dave are home alone, slightly under siege in a society where feral youth are constantly threatening and shouting in the streets beyond the double-glazing. They are bored; so they invent a virtual wild boy, Victor, who somehow escapes from the computer screen to draw obscene drawings on their Venetian blinds, and to mess up their designer living-room, all red sofas and white carpets.

There’s something about Pamela Carter’s script – inspired by the real-life story of the wolf-boy of Aveyron – that makes Wild Life seem more like a work-in-progress, exploring vital themes about the sterility of modern “virtual” experience, than a stand-alone drama offering a good night out to audiences on tour. It does, though, attract a fine pair of performances from Lesley Hart and David Ireland. And it leaves audience wanting more – perhaps in the form of a post-show discussion – rather than wishing that the evening had finished sooner; in a sign that like all art-forms, 21st century theatre is becoming more explicitly interactive, and less able simply to speak for itself, in a language taken for granted by artists and audiences alike.

Charles Dickens’ The Haunting is at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, and Staircase at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, both until Saturday. Wild Life is at Banchory tonight, and on tour until 19 March, including the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 11-12 March, and the Brunton, Musselburgh, 16 March.

ENDS