It was personal. Of course, it had to be. What could be more intimate than homicide? Sex, perhaps? But on a raw December night at that altitude murder seemed somehow more– fitting.
Death, then, and it was close. In Hampstead’s petite New End Theatre everything is, and all the better for it.
We gathered for an evening of mystery and fear as Miles Barden and Joshua Dickinson delivered their well-judged programme of stories told in classic fireside fashion: A Winter’s Chill.
The terror-fest began with a two thematically similar ghost stories, each with a seaside setting. Miles set the atmosphere with his accomplished unfolding of the Edwardian classic: Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad, by M.R. James. Joshua carried on the theme of the fortuitous discovery of artefacts calling up spectres in his faultless delivery of Janet Baldey’s contemporary tale set in Suffolk: Step Softly Along These Shores.
But our narrator hosts had saved the best till last. A devilishly cunning interval lulled the unwary into a false sense of normality before true horror stalked the darkened stage. To stifled gasps, Miles morphed into the deceptive persona of the protagonist in Jon Pinnock’s darkly humorous high-tech take on the House of Wax theme: After Michelangelo. In the terrifying climax, before our disbelieving eyes, Joshua became the paranoid killer of The Tell-Tale Heart. This short tale of cold-blooded murder leading by inexorable tiny increments to self-destruction could only be the work of the acknowledged master of the genre, Edgar Allan Poe, arguably equalled by that other master Fyodor Dostoevsky, but it took him a whole novel.
Each piece and each performance was a gem, but in my view the Ps ruled: Poe first and Pinnock a close second.
In short: A thoroughly satisfying event worthy of a longer run.