“Suspense, horror and repressed sexuality” are what await you in Kitchen Dog Theater’s production of “Turn of the Screw.”
The plot of the production is based off Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaption of Henry James’s tale of an English governess taking on the care of two recently orphaned children.
What unfolds is a haunting mystery surrounding the manor ground that brings the governess’s sanity into question.
The cast is comprised of two characters, the governess and a man playing several characters, both of whom are fantastic.
Cameron Cobb, an SMU graduate, portrayed each radically different character quite well, devoting unique mannerisms and motives to each. Cobb’s comedic timing is dry and delightful. He has an arsenal of British wit stored up within him and nicely paces his deadpan witticisms with his spells of dramatic intensity
The governess, Jenny Ledel, was equally excellent. What’s so striking about her performance is her dedication to the world in which her character lives. She is so completely entranced by the illusion of the play, so reactive to her environment, that despite the unevenness of the play’s tone, she and Cobb never break the audience’s belief of the play, never make you realize you’re watching actors, but rather characters- people.
While the actors were spot-on, trouble arose with the play’s content.
A lot of the lines were really, genuinely, darkly comedic, but the play kept trying to be a horror film. You’d get a dose of absurdist Monty Python-esque dry humor and then be expected to be unnerved to fear by a man in the window or something frightening appearing offstage. The audience never really knows if something is supposed to be comedy or drama.
The play walks a fine line between farcical melodrama and unnerving drama; a line it toys with throughout the arc of the plot.
The actors’ performances sustain the erratic tone of the show, keeping you interested despite never really knowing what exactly you’re seeing.
It’s difficult for the audience to shift so rapidly between comedic enjoyment and pins-and-needles suspense. It’s a bit of an odd feeling to be jerked between the two, but it’s nice to leave the theater with a sense of confusion, an uncertainty about everything that just unfolded before you.
The play ends on a similar note of uncertainty, and the confusion from the tone blends nicely with the confusion brought about by the climax. It’s funny, it’s unnerving and, more importantly, it makes you think, which is an absent element in some of today’s theater.
“Turn of the Screw,” directed by SMU graduate Christina Vela, runs through April 28 at Kitchen Dog Theater.