Montmartre’s Théâtre du Grand-Guignol rated its success by how many members of the audience fainted during performances that were likely to include severed limbs, copious quantities of fake blood and grisly murders. The Parisian theatre flourished until the second world war, after which it went into decline, possibly because by then the horrors that humans could inflict on each other outstripped anything the stage could offer.
Carl Grose’s cheerfully gory celebration of the theatre has the makings of something smart, funny and scary. Grose, who has written extensively for Kneehigh, plays neatly on the difference between fakery and reality in a show that offers several plays within a play. Outside the theatre, a murderous monster is on the loose, and inside the timid Dr Alfred Binet (Matthew Pearson) attempts to probe the mind of the self-styled “prince of terror”, aka the amiable playwright André de Lorde (Jonathan Broadbent), and discover the trauma that spurs De Lorde’s creativity.
Grose invokes the real-life players of the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol including Maxa (Emily Raymond), the “queen of scream” who was the world’s “most assassinated woman”, and the ingenious Ratineau (Paul Chequer) who was master of special effects. Designer Alex Doidge-Green’s set includes blood-splattered walls and swinging lights.
The performances are a scream, but as yet the evening doesn’t deliver either enough laughs or sufficient shivers, at least not if you are stone cold sober. The first half is too long, slack and tame. It gets stronger after the interval, becoming more interesting as it plays with ideas of illusion and reality, moral crusades and critical judgments including – in a brilliant moment – the star rating system for reviews.
In fact, the more layered the script becomes, and the less it tries for mere schlock, the funnier and less effortful it seems. Perhaps Dr Binet is right: horror is all in the mind.
• Until 22 November. Box office: 020-7407 0234. Venue: Southwark Playhouse, London
