Creepy tale of sexual rivalry and ambition
TIM Arthur’s Darktales is billed as the scariest show at the Fringe. Which, I have to say, is stretching things a bit. Not that this horror-thriller centred around sexual jealousy and professional ambition doesn’t have its moments. It does. Just not enough of them to make the show stand out from the crowd.
It’s one thing to namecheck Saki and Edgar Allan Poe (lines from The Raven get an inevitable run out here) but quite another to conjure up the chilling atmosphere of their work.
Darktales falls short of the convincing psychological depth any good horror really needs to get under your skin and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Also, at only an hour long, the production would benefit by being expanded in order to let the plot develop at a more suitable pace.
It starts off promisingly enough, with Alex Crowley (Andrew Paul), a lecturer in creative writing, bringing term to a close with an eerie hide-and-seek ghost story – one it turns out he’s appropriated from Saki, a plagiaristic trait that will carry more significance later on.
Crowley had a hit years back with a collection of stories, Darktales, but his literary career has been in a slump ever since. Now he’s on the verge of making a comeback, with a new book soon to be published. He’s invited former student Jack Langton (Corrie bad boy Sean Ward), a well known horror blogger, to interview him about his work.
From here on in, the tension slowly but surely gets ratcheted up, with Jack, a promising writer who dropped out of the course on account of Crowley’s incessant criticism, arriving with his own agenda in mind. The suspense is further augmented by the spectre of the mysterious Lucy (Carrie Marx), an object of desire for both men.
Arthur’s writing is measured and crisp and Paul and Ward are convincing as the hasbeen and the could’ve been with scores to settle. But if the set-up is smoothly laid out in the first half hour, the rush to get to the denouement in the second feels shoehorned in, as suspense gives way to mania and gore. The end result is a decent, solid production, rather than a truly terrifying one. Pleasance Courtyard, until August 29