Spirit of ghoSt author LiveS on
Impressive performances by actors who take on double roles in atmospheric play
MICHAEL MOFFATT SHOW OF THE WEEK
L‘It’s a slight weakness that Kyle Hixon plays Stephen as both a man and as an 11-year-old’
ost Hearts is based on a ghost story by M.R. James, considered one of the best writers in the genre. He didn’t say he believed in ghosts, just that he was prepared to accept evidence if it satisfied him. He said his stories would achieve their purpose if his readers ‘felt pleasantly uncomfortable’ when walking along a solitary road at nightfall or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours’.
His ghosts, ‘act in ways not inconsistent with the rules of folklore’. But he was a master of describing the right settings and surroundings to provoke an unnerving atmosphere and of introducing the disturbing realities that can lie beneath ordinary things and people, the feeling that malevolent spirits can be anywhere.
Lost Hearts is brought to life online in this 45-minute Bewley’s Café Theatre production, filmed in the splendidly atmospheric 18th century Roundwood House in Mountrath.
The 11-year-old orphan Stephen has been taken into the care of his elderly cousin Mr Apney, who is delighted to see him, in particular because of his age.
Stephen is a little nervous about aspects of the house, and of the reclusive scholar Mr Apney, a keen student of Zoroastrian culture and the Roman god Mithras, but the housekeeper, Mrs Bunch is friendly and reassuring about Mr Apney; he was a good man, who had taken in a couple of poor children and apparently looked after them well before they left.
I presume budget came into the production reckoning and it’s a slight weakness that Kyle Hixon plays Stephen both as man and as an 11-year-old boy. The atmosphere and surroundings are authentic, and once you accept the situation in the story, it works very well. (After all, the 82-year-old Ian McKellen played the 30-year-old Hamlet on the London stage this year.)
Stephen has unpleasant experiences and hears voices. Real or imaginary? And what tore his nightgown to pieces?
Never mind, Mr Apney is sure he can clear up these puzzles – later, at night.
The adaptation adds an additional back story to Stephen’s life, in which we see him, as a grown man, receiving psychiatric treatment for some disturbing early trauma in his life.
The dialogue is generally taken direct from the original story, and all the trappings of pseudo science, medieval hokum and melodrama make up the menu – at times literally.
Michael James Ford does an impressive double job as the psychiatrist and the sinister Mr Apney, while Bairbre Ní Chaoimh with a switch of accents tackles the roles of Mrs Bunch and the psychiatrist’s assistant.
Book tickets at Thelockinn.ie.