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Prepare to be scared . . .
Frighteners: Director and producer Andrew Hall, left, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Duncan Preston, who played father Joe, co-producer Tracey Childs, Richard O'Callaghan who plays Clairvoyant Ken, co-producer Jamie Clark, and Joe McFadden who plays boyfriend Andy at a Ayckbourn tribute performance at Richmond. THINK of Alan Ayckbourn and the foibles
of middle class suburbia spring to mind with normality nudged off
balance to set up a chain reaction of social calamity at the
sophisticated end of farce. Yet hidden among Sir
Alan's 76 plays is one which is of a much darker hue, where laughter is
a stranger - Haunting Julia
which opens at Wolverhampton Grand next week. It is a play which has never toured before and of
six productions this current one is the one Ayckbourn, who was a guest
at a recent gala evening in his honour at Richmond Theatre, says he
likes the most which is praise indeed as three previous productions were
directed by himself and Andrew Hall and Tracey Childs were involved with
the rest, including this production. Hall, the director, first directed the play at
Lichfield Garrick two years ago with Christopher Timothy in the lead
role – Timothy was unavailable for the tour so his role as the father is
taken by Duncan Preston. The plot is simple; Julia was a musical prodigy,
aged 19 with a glittering career ahead of her until she committed
suicide 12 years ago. Her father, Joe, has never managed to come to
terms with her death and has turned his dead daughter's bedroom
into a shrine as he searches for answers and reasons. He invites Andy, Julia's boyfriend and the last
person to see her alive, to see it along with Ken, a psychic, or perhaps
a charlatan, who believes she can be contacted and even that she will
appear. The problem is how to describe Haunting Julia which is neither a horror story, nor a ghost story in the conventional sense. Co-producer Tracey Childs, best remembered as Lynne Howard in Howard's Way, went straight to the horse's mouth and asked Ayckbourn how he would describe it. He replied: “I set out originally to write a
ghost story and I soon found out I was writing less about ghosts and
more about the people they leave behind; in short it is a supernatural
love story.” The production has no state of the art, shock
tactic special effects yet it still manages to chill the audience to
the marrow and Childs said: “I have always thought that audience's
imaginations were much more sophisticated than people give them credit
for and I think simpler is better. “I didn't want people sitting there thinking ‘I
wonder how they did that' and then they miss the next bit of the action.
People should get caught up in the story because it is not about the
special effects it is about those three men in the room and what they
have created. It is their love for this girl, and their guilt and
everything else that has conjured her up. The emotion is much more
important than what goes bang in the night.” This is third Hall and Childs production, stars
Preston, Richard O'Callaghan, who was in the original Garrick production
and Joe McFadden and Childs said: “There has never been a national tour
and we love the play, we are passionate about it. It is an Ayckbourn
unknown gem just sitting there.” Haunting Julia runs at Wolverhampton Grand from
15-10-12 to 20-10-12 Roger Clarke The play
Frightening statistics Sir Alan Ayckbourn, now 73, has written 76 full length plays - Shakespeare is credited with a mere 38 or so - with Haunting Julia his 47th, a play which has been sporadically scaring the wits out of audiences since 1994. Its inspiration was The Woman in Black,
the play by Stephen Mallatratt which was adapted from Susan Hill's 1983
thriller novel. The Woman in Black was first revealed to
audiences in 1987 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre-in-the-Round in
Scarborough where Ayckbourn had been artistic director since 1972 - a
position he held until the 2009-10 season. Mallatratt's stage version relies on little more
than actors feeding the imagination of the audience who in turn will
then scare the pants off themselves. The chilling tale is all in the
mind of those paying to frighten themselves. The idea must have appealed to Ayckbourn, who
incidentally was on a sabbatical at the National Theatre when the play
was first performed. He was particularly taken by the idea that terror
could be created without the need of elaborate special effects but with
just good acting and a suggestive storyline. The result was Haunting Julia - a new play
which was set to open in new premises. In spring 1994 the Stephen Joseph Theatre in
Scarborough was expecting to move from its in-the- round Westwood site
in a former high school to new premises in a former Odeon cinema in the
seaside resort - its current home today. DELAYS AND PROBLEMS But delays and problems dogged the conversion and
it was to be 1996 before the new theatre was ready for its grand opening
- two years behind schedule. With Julia ready to haunt but with completion of
the Odeon hardly imminent the choice was simple; shelve Julia or go
ahead at the existing theatre-in-the-round. Ayckbourn had written the play as a proscenium
production but with no choice - and no proscenium - it premiered on 20
April 1994 in the round to mixed reviews - suffering the Marmite
syndrome. Reviewers either loved it or hated it. The play was a certainly a departure from
Ayckbourn's earlier work which often encompassed the marriage rituals of
the suburban middle classes with such comedies as The Norman
Conquests and Bedroom Farce. The reviewers seemed to fall into two camps.
Those who liked the more abstract storyline exploring more contemporary
themes and those who missed the Ayckbourn of old, of sophisticated
comedies about married couples such as Absurd Person Singular. FAVOURABLE NOTICES Change is not always accepted first time around.
Later revivals of the play however have attracted generally favourable
notices There were plans for a move to the West End in
1995 but those fell through and Julia returned to the afterlife until a
revival in 1999, this time as an end-stage production in the Stephen
Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, the converted Odeon, five years after it
had first been due there. Again a move to the West End was mooted but
Julia remained rooted in Scarborough. The play was finally published in 2005 and a
major tour was planned but again nothing came of it and it was 27 May
2008 before Julia was again haunting the Stephen Joseph Theatre with
that production then touring to the New Victoria theatre,
Newcastle-under-Lyme, theatres linked by the late Stephen Joseph's The
Studio Theatre Company. Julia reappeared at the Lichfield Garrick, then
the Riverside Studios in London before embarking on a national tour
ready to chill to the marrow - you just need to listen to your
imagination and your mind will do the rest. Roger Clarke |
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