In the latest and possibly unlikeliest entry in the ongoing line-up of film-to-stage transfers, Theatre of Blood, Jim Broadbent plays a man possessed. And who can blame him? As Edward Lionheart, a failed Shakespearean actor whose method of revenge on his detractors makes Richard III seem a pussycat, Broadbent gives full, gleeful rein to an activity many in (and out of) the industry have doubtless considered indulging numerous times: murdering theatre critics. And messily, too.
No one at Daily Variety feels his wrath, though Lee Simpson and Phelim McDermott's adaptation of the cult Vincent Price horror film has inordinate fun elsewhere all but naming names.
Will any of this score with those hapless uninitiates not already versed in the intricate byways of the commentator and the artist — not to mention the rivalries between critics? Probably not. But everyone else should have a good, anarchic time, some first-act longueurs notwithstanding, and perhaps emit the odd squeal as well. When it comes to strategies of extinction, Lionheart is a breed apart.
Theatre of Blood is undeniably lowbrow, so it comes as something of a delicious shock to find it packaged in such ravishing high style by director McDermott, whose Improbable theatre troupe has co-produced the show with the National on an elevated budget. If the play does transfer to Broadway, which seems entirely possible given that street's self-infatuation, it won't come cheap.
Rae Smith's funhouse of a set simply won't quit, its decaying Victorian surrounds alone worth the price of a ticket. With its famously deep stage, the Lyttelton by now has a history of celebrated designs from which their given shows were inseparable: Theatre of Blood immediately joins the ranks of such visual extravaganzas as An Inspector Calls and Les Parents Terribles that have a visceral effect, too — and not just because the flying apparatus that sends Lionheart airborne looks a tad lightweight for Broadbent's frame.
The jolts come mostly via the savagings that beset our poshly spoken scribes, who range from a poodle-carrying critic for the Sunday Times (Bette Bourne, in prim, prime form) to a bibulous Daily Mail scribe (Tim McMullan), who ultimately cracks under the weight of openings: Five plays a week? I can't take it anymore.
And why waste time on ordinary murders when, as Lionheart reasons, you can do them in character? At which point, cue scenes from Julius Caesar, Henry VI, Part I, The Merchant of Venice and Titus Andronicus, all of which find Lionheart giving the performances of his life.
The staging, complete with gothic lighting from Colin Grenfell that has its own spidery allure, imaginatively raises speculation about who will go first? last? best?
But as the evening pans out, it's less the order of the murders that matters than their increasingly inventive nature.
