We’re heading towards witching week, which means this year’s instalment of this now annual burst of dramatic terror should be a welcome arrival. It should, but isn’t, as these four short plays about "death and resurrection" plus a deeply peculiar interlude of zombie belly dancing are disappointing verging on desperate. It’s a Theatre of Horror all right but not in the way its creators intended.
The three world premieres, by April De Angelis, Neil LaBute and Mark Ravenhill, promised much but deliver little. De Angelis and Ravenhill opt for that horror film staple of remote countryside; Ravenhill’s The Exclusion Zone, the best of this limp trio, even has its protagonists proclaim themselves to be horror-film fanatics. The torchlit set-up of two young men out camping on a date is promising but quickly turns ridiculous.
De Angelis doesn’t give us long enough with her bereaved widow for us to care either way when things turn bloody, as they inevitably must. Yet compared with LaBute’s fatuous monologue about child abduction, these two, plus the dancing zombie, are works of genius.
The longest piece is Reanimator, William Ewart’s adaptation of short stories by horror meister HP Lovecraft. In frantic schlocky scenes, a pair of medical students in early 20th-century America attempt to bring human corpses back to life.
Director Adam Meggido hurries his actors through this as if he’s ashamed, which maybe he is, considering he curated the whole evening. When an audience starts giggling at a Terror season, there’s something very wrong.
Until Oct 31. Information: 020 7407 0234. southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Terror 2010
Southwark Playhouse
Shipwright Yard, corner of Tooley Street and Bermondsey Street, SE1 2TF
