Terrifying . . . and that’s just Sir Ian’s voiceover
The Exorcist (Phoenix Theatre) Verdict: Fright night
VINCENT PRICE no longer being available, Sir Ian McKellen has become the voice of devilry.
Sir Ian lends his fruity cackle to a storming version of The Exorcist which opened this week — perfect for this season of Hallowe’en and All Souls.
To stage this celebrated tale of a demon occupying the body of a little girl is no mean task. How to do the levitation or head- swivelling scenes so well known from the 1973 film?
Is there not a danger that audiences might laugh instead of being frozen rigid by fear?
I can only speak for myself, but the skin on my neck and knees prickled like hot pork fat as the curtains to young Regan’s bedroom billowed and the evil spirit took its grip of her.
Lights fizzled, thunder clapped, a drawer shot across the room and Sir Ian’s wicked timbre was heard commanding the innocent child ‘undo your buttons’ so that he could colonise her blood and bones. Eek.
The Exorcist is not for children. Nor, really, is it for anyone with a dicky heart or a rationalist’s disbelief in the great here-yonder. As chief exorcist Father Merrin points out, if you buy into the idea of Satan, you must accept the idea of angels and God, too.
Fr Merrin, whom we meet properly only towards the end, is played by Peter Bowles — an entrance lit like something out of Hitchcock.
Is old Bowles too suave for a priest? Almost. But he hits a tone between melodrama and the eerie which suits this 100minute horror job. Camp has never been creepier.
There is no interval. They presumably did not want the audience running out into Charing Cross Road, screaming. As the lights flip off at the start of the show, plunging some theatre- goers into quivering wails, a voice says: ‘It doesn’t stop until it’s finished!’
Jenny Seagrove, whose voice these days is almost as deep as Sir Ian’s, plays Regan’s mother. Adam Garcia is Fr Karras, the doubting churchman who makes initial contact with the malevolent spirit. Clare Louise Connolly does well as Regan.
It scared the bejasus out of me. A VERSION of this review appeared in earlier editions.