There’s a fine line between horror and humour. Too much gore and screaming and the audience will be lost in fits of laughter. Grand Guignol, however, manages to balance things, serving shocks and laughs in equal doses.
The Theatre du Grand-Guignol in Paris (1897-1962) was known
for its horror dramas. Its plays were
filled with so much explicit violence and frights aplenty that a resident
doctor was employed to care for the audience.
Tales of murder, revenge and sadism delighted audiences, effectively
delivering the torture porn in many of today’s horror films.
This particular play, written by Carl Grose and transferring from the Theatre Royal Plymouth,
is a fictionalised account of the theatre in its heyday. It focuses on playwright Andre De Lorde
(Jonathan Broadbent), a tortured artist whose sick mind conjures up gruesome,
macabre stories for his adoring audience.
He is met by psychologist Dr Alfred Binet (Matthew Pearson) whose
interest in the theatre extends to De Lorde himself – what kind of man could
write such stories? Hilariously, De
Lorde is haunted by the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe who provides him with
inspiration, though there’s also a wealth of childhood trauma for the doctor to
uncover. It’s all wrapped up in a murder
mystery, with a series of grisly murders taking place outside of the theatre walls. It asks us to question: does art imitate
life, or is life imitating art?
With this production, it’s very much art imitating
life. Presenting numerous sections of De
Lorde’s plays like dissected corpses, we are literally the audience within the theatre
of the play, the fourth wall as transparent as a ghost. The ceiling above the audience literally
shudders at the entrance of Poe, whilst the script is full of actorly jokes that
climax with an evil critic (I don’t know what they could possibly mean…). Some audience members on the front row were
even sprayed with blood in this performance.
And there’s enough blood here to make Sweeney Todd look like
a pussycat. As one of the characters
jokes, what sells is “guts and tits”. The
play does have a certain creepy atmosphere to it, but it’s soon filled with
blood splatters, tongues being cut out, intestines sprawling across the floor
and eyeballs being…removed.
The violence, though, all fits into the melodramatic style
of intentionally hammy acting – even if it borders on silly at times. The story builds on horror clichés, delivered
to the audience by the superb cast with a knowing wink and a nudge. Robert Portal's eyebrows alone bring a sinister
edge to the multiple characters he plays, and Emily Raymond is hugely
entertaining as Maxa, ‘the world’s most assassinated woman’. This is a horror play that doesn’t take
itself too seriously. That may deter
some people looking for a genuine thrill and, certainly, the play somewhat
oversimplifies its psychoanalytical elements.
Yet Grand Guignol is full of
gory visual delights that provide laughs at the twisted end of the spectrum this
Halloween.
3/5
Watch: Grand Guignol runs at the Southwark Playhouse until 22nd November.
Ticket courtesy of Official Theatre, visit their website here.
