REVIEW: Saint Maud at Live Theatre, Newcastle
Here’s a seasonal bolt of electricity that will either jerk you from your end-of-day torpor or hold you rapt for 80 minutes.
It sounds paradoxical but it might actually do both.
Seasonal because… Halloween.
But how much of Saint Maud is natural and how much supernatural is open to debate – as was the case with the acclaimed cultish film by Rose Glass of which this is the first stage adaptation.
The questions will come after, for this is a story with a disturbing hinterland that leaves much to the imagination.
And it unfolds on a deceptively mundane set (what a box of tricks it turns out to be) and with a soundscape blending the horror genre’s pseudo religious playbook with all manner of unsettling thumps and thrums.
There’s equally thrilling musicality in the (often strong) language deployed by Jessica Andrews, the Sunderland novelist here making a notable theatrical debut in adapting Glass’s screenplay.
One character refers to “the edge of an ache” which beautifully describes a play dependent on atmosphere but above all else on three riveting performances.
Enter, in the person of Brogan Gilbert, Maud, saintly Maud, a Maud in nurse’s uniform desperate to do good, to atone for… something.
Crunching over the sand towards the front door, she is the butter-wouldn’t-melt picture of good intent with her wide eyes and barely tamed curls.
What a contrast to the woman she has come to nurse through her dying days, Dani Arlington’s Amanda, the once famous dancer now confined to a regimen of care and medication in a lonely house beside the sea.
Graceful still, she rails at the dying of the light – and at Maud. “Don’t touch me!” she commands.
They’re chalk and cheese, Amanda a physical creature used to expressing herself through movement. She chivvies Maud to relax with a few moves but with Maud it’s all in the mind – and for much of the play we’re in there too, seeing the malignant horrors she sees.
This tense relationship of opposites, veering in mood from devotion to despotism, doesn’t have the stage all to itself, for the real world intrudes from time to time in the homely form of Carol, played by Scottish actress Neshla Caplan.
That Carol’s a sex worker is in keeping with the imaginative world of the play. A daily ‘help’ with a vacuum cleaner clearly wouldn’t cut it.
So in this scenario Carol is the ‘normal’ one – and Amanda’s need for her services doesn’t sit well with a nurse who converses with God and is intent on saving a soul.
Terrific performances and a winning creative team – Gazelle Twin, music; Matthew Tuckey, sound; Alison Ashton, set; Drummond Orr, lighting; Roberta Jean, movement; Lou Duffy, costume – contribute to an unforgettable spectacle.
And credit to director Jack McNamara for pulling it all together and spicing up autumn with something to savour. Assuming you’ve got the nerve!
Saint Maud runs until Saturday, November 2. Tickets and info from Live Theatre.