Review: Ernest And The Pale Moon, Harrogate Theatre (From York Press)

Review: Ernest And The Pale Moon, Harrogate Theatre

10:17am Monday 24th May 2010 in

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IT was all over in an hour of gothic storytelling as intense as absinthe.

Too often theatre can drag on, but one of the benefits of the Edinburgh Fringe is the stipulation to keep shows to 60 minutes, a tight focus that concentrates the mind of performers and audience alike.

Since 2002, London company Les Enfants Terribles has been at the sharp end of such thrillingly piercing theatre, and Oliver Lansley’s latest work is a deliciously dark delight.

In a macabre tale of obsession, murderous rage and spiralling madness, Lansley’s buttoned-up Ernest likes to watch the moon-pale, white-eyed, young woman in the apartment block opposite, until the sight of her with another man drives him to murder. From here on, nothing is black and white in this noir revenge drama.

A cast of four, faces painted white, lips exaggerated with rouge, combine horror storytelling in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James with live music and sound effects (not least the crunch of bones cracking). The gothic designs recall the playful Tim Burton; the lighting, smoke and flickering mirrors echo Hitchcock and the narrative has the weirdness and paranoia of Franz Kafka.

Atmosphere is all in Ernest And The Pale Moon, and on Thursday it made for the most visually memorable night’s theatre your reviewer has experienced this year with an increasing, if strangely pleasurable, discomfort.

Last week’s three-night run deserved bigger audiences, and it is to be hoped Harrogate Theatre will persist in giving Lansley’s troupe a Yorkshire