The chilly depths of winter constitute the perfect time for a story with a twist of gothic horror, which makes the prospect of idiosyncratic auteur Anthony Neilson respinning the 1843 Edgar Allan Poe story about a haunted conscience a beguiling one. He’s given it a cheeky theatrical makeover too: our protagonist is now a playwright, whom the National Theatre is hounding for a long-overdue commission.
Here’s a problem, though: as in the Poe original, there’s no sense of motive or psychological analysis and that’s a considerable issue for a two-hour drama. The first, and superior, half of Neilson’s own production is, however, deliciously destabilising, with slippery, twisting layers of truth and artifice; we’re increasingly tantalised and await the inevitable nudge towards the macabre, the ghoulish.
Celeste Allen (Tamara Lawrance) struck it big with her debut play but is all over the place with its follow-up. She has taken refuge in Brighton, renting the attic room in the house of landlady Nora (Imogen Doel), an earnest young woman of slightly creepy naivety who wears a huge plastic eye-patch. We long to see her damaged eye and when we do… Oh, let’s not spoil the surprise, but listen out carefully for the word “I”.
Even as the scenes unfold between Celeste and Nora, a detective (David Carlyle) arrives in the full glare of the theatre’s house lights to unpick Celeste’s story. Should we be worried that he keeps calling her Camille? As so often, the anticipation of horror is better than the gore itself and the unspooling of the plot is nowhere near as sharp as the set-up.
Lawrance reminds us why she is one of the best young actresses around, allowing Celeste’s inner demons to strain behind every seemingly laid-back, liberal sentence. Doel, always an intriguing performer, is superbly unsettling at conveying Nora’s gauche intensity. A tale worth telling, then, although the ending needs help.
Until Jan 9 (020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk)
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