Lovecraft – Devil’s Reef
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7O6dTtQUNQ
Our drama GCSE class had worked on interpreting and adapting Lovecraft short stories for the stage. Building on this success we decided to combine our efforts and put Lovecraft on stage in all of his glory. We worked on adapting four stories to the stage: From Beyond, The Temple, Dagon, and the Shadow over Innsmouth, with a linking story written by myself and set in Arkham Asylum.
Arkham Asylum
FBI agent Ondrej Jablonski arrives in Arkham Asylum to interview four of their mental patients regarding certain “classified” incidents that have taken place in a town 50 miles to the north called Innsmouth. He is rather taken with the head Nurse, Margaret Adams, and flirts with her exhaustively much to the psychiatrists chagrin. As the patients are brought in and the interviews commence the reality of the mental patients flashback is contructed by the hospital staff so “reality” seems to melt into fantasy. Is this some twisted interrogation style or a theatrical technique? The three psychiatrists represent the extremes of reaction to the patients, from dismissal of their experiences, to a willingness to believe, to a gentle humouring.
From Beyond
The first story features Miss Rebecca Carter, an investigative journalist working for a tabloid newspaper based who is driven crazy by the experiments of her friend and colleague Crawford Tillinghast, who hailed from Innsmouth. His “infernal, electrical machine” allows people to stare into other dimensions and she explores this strange new world – by dancing with jellyfish to a Billy Holiday song. As her schizophrenia peaks the flashback melts grotesquely back into the hospital, with evil nurses approaching her with giant syringes. Theatrically this first story allows the audience to get accustomed to the inconsistent realities of the mental patients – the themes of From Beyond were perfect for exploring this method.
The Temple
Having established the style of the play, the second story “The Temple” takes the audience to the bottom of the ocean as a “submarine” set is constructed around the patient. This short play begins with the sinking of a passenger liner and the recovery of a strange cursed amulet that proceeds to possess the crew and drive them insane. The finale features Edith Piaf, “Padam Padam Padam” and the Captain overcoming his own desire to claim the amulet and donning a diving helmet instead, for his escape out of the stricken vessel to the surface, and his subsequent capture and incarceration in Arkham Asylum. This story featured a stunning set of submarine archways with remotely adjusted emergency light settings, and great sound effects coupled with the Piaf finale. Theatrically, it was a “now we have explained what we will do, we will see what we can do with it” – we took the audience to the bottom of the ocean and filled it with possessed and demented sailors.
Dagon
Dagon, our third story was the extreme of the technique – Mina Heartswood, a patient in a state of catanoia experiences a “double backwards flashback” through the medium of a hypotherapist who regresses her first to an opium den where she tried to bury the memories of her experiences at sea, and then finally to “Devil’s Reef” itself. Mina was a passenger on the ocean liner sank by the Captain of the german uboat in the previous play, and washed up on the reef in a lifeboat, accompanied by her fiancee and two other survivors. The reef is populated by “damn mutant seagulls” who proceed to rip apart the two survivors- they are only stopped by the arrival of Dagon, an ancient Sumerian god who possesses the body of a previous shipwreck – through the aforementioned cursed amulet. He swaps between the bodies of the ancient castaway and her fiancee and finally the scene reaches a crescendo as the doubled Dagon with his seagull demons surround her.
The Shadow over Innsmouth
The final story shifted the predominant theme of the play as the story was recounted by some one terribly terribly sane, and the action was acted out within the confines of the hospital and was overseen by the psychiatrists and the FBI agent – a stage within a stage within a stage. Penelope Marsh recounts the experiences of her brother who went to Innsmouth to discover his family history and explains how his journey lead him to the horrifying conclusion that he, like the residents of that cursed town would turn into a fish-frog monster upon adulthood and crave to swim out and worhsip at “their sea-bottom temples”. The town is cursed because of its proximity to the Devil’s Reef, where Dagon lives as the result of an ancient pact between the island people of the east Indies and an old English pirate captain – Obed Marsh. The fish things, attracted to the town by the rituals of “ol’ Cap’n Marsh”, begin to interbreed with them, and the following generations of the Marshes are heirs to this dark fate. At the end of the story we realise that the girl too will turn into a fishfrog and want to swim out to join them and this is the “only decision she has left to make”.
Arkham Asylum
The final scene is brief and action packed. Marsh faces the terrible realisation that she will face the same fate as her brother. Carter decides she can’t take one more day in the asylum and seizes Jablonski’s gun in order to make her escape. As she does she pulls out the cursed amulet from Jablonski’s pocket. The psychiatrists and mental patients realise that Jablonski is Dagon. The uboat Captain grabs the gun from Carter and points it at Jablonski, threatening to kill him. Jablonski is not scared. They struggle for the gun and in the fight it goes off, and hits Nurse Adams – who dies instantly. The Captain and the psychiatrists drop to the gound in shock. Carter escapes. Penelope Marsh takes her exit choosing the seabottom temples over mortal life, and affects the characteristic frogwalk of the people of Innsmouth, Jablonski follows her. Finally the real FBI show up, late, because somebody (Dagon) messed with their car.
Evaluation
The audience loved the play, both students and adults. They were particularly convinced by the seagulls with their excellent masks and bird sounds, many found this to be the most frightening piece. You always tread a thin line between humour and fear, and the second night at the Strasnicke (which means haunted in Czech) theatre was the best as it achieved that perfect balance – tragicomedy. Our subsequent performance at the Alfred ve Dvore, was a more mature performance and the actions were more thought out. Carter was particularly excellent with her New Jersey accent, which she had failed to do at the Strasnicke. The story was complex and didn’t exactly add up, but the tellers were insane, so how was it supposed to? The main thread of cursed amulet and evil happenings associated with it was followed by all.
With a cast of 40 though, you have to make allowances for the occassional weak performance and I believe this play would be performed better by a smaller cast with more mental hospital staff performing multiple roles. This would go a long way to achieving the sense of flexible reality required by the mental hospital insane flashback basic structure. Hermetically, the play was structured around an antiplot ToL, each story was associated with one of the 3 psychiatrists (3 triads) and all lead towards the “woman in red” and the realisation that the good guy was in fact the devil – it was a “reverse frog princess” story based on the Etz Ha Klippot.
Post-Lovecraft
After the performance of Lovecraft a small group of us went to see the Tiger Lillies interpretation of Lovecraft which was being shown again in Prague. Here is a link to the trailer on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYsK7AZ38YM
