Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Mark Gatiss, Fenella Woolgar, Ryan Whittle, Gerald McDermott, Cameron Percival, Ronny Jhutti, Michael Bertenshaw, Tony Turner, Ewan Bailey, Chris Harper, Sam Dale, Lewis Bray.
We live in a world that is rapidly losing its sense of wonder, of having everything explained and leaving the thought of fancy and intrigue hanging in the air as if somehow resembling the figure of dishonest fruit hiding knowledge from the feast of humanity.
We commit untold atrocities against nature and quite rightly the right minded of us feel shame and go out of the way to facilitate the best possible outcome in which to solve the situation and yet the places in which we should allow to sleep unhindered, to live out their eternal slumber, are readily torn apart, knocked down, bulldozed over, almost seemingly desecrated in the urge to modernise, to create a sense of prevailing order. There is no room for the old and the haunting memories they hold; it is now vogue to be dismissive of what the past can bring to life, we have become immune to the thought of metaphorical ghosts returning to plague us.
How to install fear of the unknown into those who either have no regard for it or those whose profession sees them revel in its sinister overtones, it is hard to believe, although not unreasonable to think, that there is something out there that frightens noted American Horror writer Stephen King, that the Rats trilogy in which James Herbert wrote with such vivid observation, was not somehow steeped in some horrific truth which caught him at times concerned and worried for his own safety, and sanity.
It is to writer Neil Brand that the audience can gladly receive some insight into this strange phenomenon of fear, and one that has been produced without losing the sense of wonder in which binds all such stories, especially that of one of Britain’s finest turn of the 20th century writers, Montague Rhodes James.
The Haunting of M.R. James is a story which combines the disturbing and often fatalistic imagery of M.R. James’ fertile imagination and blends them against the backdrop of his own life with almost combustible ease.
Starring Mark Gatiss as the honour bound author, the tale woven is one in which the listener finds honest sympathy for the lives at risk as a ghost of Cambridge’s past hides amongst the reeds and under the waters of the River Cam.
It is the kind of part that horror enthusiast and keen M.R. James fan Mark Gatiss delivers with a sensual sense of understanding, having digested all the words of a literature giant, he is able to inhabit the fear in which the author made his distinguished name from.
The feeling of time escaping from its man-made shackles and the threat of modernism hanging forever over the writer, something he indeed rallied against in his lifetime, is powerful, deathly in its appreciation, and with support from cast members such as Fenella Woolgar, Ewan Bailey and Lewis Bray, The Haunting of M.R. James is an addiction of writing, an opening of other realms to which you do not want to escape from.
A genius production, one that rises to the occasion with clarity!
Ian D. Hall