Turn of the Screw at the Queen’s Theatre.

Ruth Kettle-Frisby reviews Henry James’ Turn of the Screw at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch.

Adapted for the stage by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, and interpreted through a fresh and pertinent late 1980s lens under the direction of the brilliantly talented Anna Marsland, The Turn of the Screw is a poignant reimagining of the dense thicket that is Henry James’ original short tale. It has been refreshingly transformed under Marsland’s direction, and will continue to echo in my thoughts long after the curtain call.

The adaptation was first staged in 2013, and was arguably overly-reliant upon the treatment of the arts as some sort of convenient ethical no man’s land, letting creatives off the hook in their flirtation with manifestly perverse titillation involving children for art’s sake. In a welcome focal shift, Marsland’s setting of the play springs from the child protection reforms that led to the 1989 Children Act. The play is deliberately ambiguous, but for my own money, this production bears witness to childhood trauma, and warns against the multifaceted toxic power dynamics through which – consciously or unconsciously – abusive adults operate.

The success of this performance is heavily reliant on the chemistry between Lexine Lee who plays young Flora and her governess, played by the brilliant Siubhan Harrison. The confused and traumatised character of Miles is the most complex to capture, and James Akka’s accomplishes portrayal of him is nothing short of breathtaking. The deeply troubling narrative is offset by the dry comic delivery of Kristin McIlquham who plays Mrs Grose.

The audience are privy not only to what the governess sees, but truths about her that lie beyond her own perception: ghostly visions all-consumingly mingle with her own insecurities, sending her down a dead-end conspiracy-driven path. She affords conspiratorial agency to the children under her protection where there is none, and in her obsessive, single-minded determination to protect them, she ends up compounding the harm that had already been dealt to them by their previous guardians. Sordid layers of truth, shrouded at first in ghostly uncertainty develop gradually before gaining momentum into sharpened relief as deep tragedy – and with it, a host of unanswerable questions – unfolds.

The darkly intense realism sits uneasily with the classic gothic horror aesthetic, adding thought-provoking dimensions to what is already a bamboozling plot! But all the classics are there: storms, silhouettes, sudden sound effects and possessed TV sets will make you jump simultaneously into nostalgia and out of your own skin, while your mind claws around for answers.

The chiaroscuro lighting and principles of perspective ingeniously create illusions of depth and expansive space that emphasise desolate isolation using simple platforms. Sporadically broken panes of glass trellised behind an undulating curtain providing a suitably eerie interface between the ghostly influence outside and the growing chaos brewing both with and between the characters on the inside. 

In the true spirit of Henry James’ intentions for this tale, the real horror is achieved via manipulation of the patterns, tendencies and weaknesses in our own psychology: your curious romantic willingness to be seduced by the obsessive ramblings of a mysterious protagonist will come back to haunt you!

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

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