Immersive thriller has plenty of twists in tale

DIRECTOR and writer Dugald Bruce-Lockhart’s early life had parallels with that of the late conservationist Gerald Durrell, best known for his book My Family and Other Animals.

So when Dugald’s father told him about a spooky short story written by Durrell, he was intrigued.

Dugald, 57, who lives in Hayes, Kent, with his wife Penny Rawlins, their son, Mackenzie, and their daughter, Cassidy, wrote The Shadow in the Mirror, a theatrical adaptation of Durrell’s novella The Entrance, now running at the Mill at Sonning.

A bookseller is staying in an old country house and uncovers an ancient, hidden doorway — with something lurking behind it. As the threshold between life and death becomes blurred, old secrets are revealed…

“My father was MI6 and I was brought up in Cyprus, Vienna, Nigeria and Germany so a very itinerant lifestyle, which is where my love of Greece comes from,” says Dugald, “and it was in Vienna that I read this story where they were posted.

“My parents were in the Foreign Office and I had a lifestyle very much like Gerald Durrell, I used to keep animals and all sorts of creepy-crawlies, to my mother’s dismay. So I grew up on Gerald Durrell stories but my dad said, ‘you haven’t read this one’ and I read it in a thunderstorm and it was classic, it’s almost like the framework for the story itself.

“I read this ghost story in an attic room in Vienna at the age of 14 and I couldn’t look in a mirror for about a week, it was so terrifying and spooky.”

The play features George Dillon as John, the Jailer, Gregg Lowe as Gideon de Teildras Villeray/Judge/ Assistant, Giles Taylor as Edward Mallory/Warden/ Prosecutor and Nick Waring as Peter Letting.

Set design is by Diego Pitarch, with costumes by Natalie Titchener, lighting by Mike Robertson and sound design and composition by Simon Slater. Video design is by Graham Weymouth, with casting by Kate Plantin.

Dugald has been to the Mill before. “I have been here a couple of times to see shows and I directed a one-hour version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Ed Hall’s Propeller Company.

“This was a couple of years ago, which is how I first met Adam Rolston, in fact, and Adam and I then struck up a relationship.

“I’d written a couple of books and the first book was optioned and then we were looking at the film script and he jumped on board with that. Then I mentioned this play and he loved the sound of it.

“I would describe it as a gothic thriller, so it’s part ghost story, part whodunnit, part courtroom drama.

“The protagonist is called away to go and catalogue some books in this chateau in the Gorges du Tarn, in the wilds of France, in the winter.

“While he’s there on the first night, he’s been snowed in, he’s quite happy. He notices in the mirror that the door is open to the sitting room and he turns around, the door is in fact shut. When he looks back in the mirror, the door continues to open in the reflection.

“He starts to obviously realise that something isn’t right and that there is something living in the reflection in the mirrors.

“He doesn’t believe in ghosts so he doesn’t really understand it but he realises that he has to overcome this, he has to smash all the mirrors, which he doesn’t quite achieve… I can’t tell you any more, but it has about four major twists towards the end.

“We’re going for an immersive approach with the theatre so there are speakers and mirrors behind the audience. There will be a lot of spooks and bumps and loud noises to keep people on their toes or out of their seats, hopefully it will keep people gripped.

“It's got a feeling of The Woman in Black in style, the storytelling of it, as opposed to Stranger Things in town, for instance, so it’s more of an organic storytelling experience, but it is spooky and chilling with a wonderful set design by Diego Pitarch.”

Dugald is working with his cast for the first time. “I have met Giles because I teach at drama schools and he directs at drama schools and I’ve seen Nick here. I saw him do Deathtrap, which was fantastic, that was here, which a friend of mine, Tam Williams, directed, whose parents live just round the corner.

“Kate Plantin, our casting director, drew up these names and they’re a fantastic cast.

“I met Tam when I was at the RSC when I first left drama school and he was in that company, it was a Katie Mitcham production.

“Then he introduced me — in Tokyo, as you do — to Edward Hall. He said to me ‘look, I’m starting up this company, Propeller, do you want to be in it?’

“Then I was in it and then Tam joined and I played Olivia to his Viola in Twelfth Night.”

Dugald’s wife, Penny Rawlins, a voiceover artist whose work includes online episodes of Peppa Pig, has also been on stage at the Mill.

“She performed here in How the Other Half Loves which Nick Masters directed and it was when I first met her, 10 years or so ago, with Harry Gostelow in it who has just been in the show before this, Don’t Rock the Boat.

“We were on holiday in Tenerife recently and she’s in a programme called 7 Bears and one of the mums said ‘by the way, you sound very’ something or other, it turned out that half the children there were watching 7 Bears on Netflix.”

Their children are already following in their footsteps.

“Mackenzie has already done an animation and a couple of voiceovers and they’re both slightly theatrical, much more than I was at that age. And he’s big into Michael Jackson right now too, which he loves.”

Dugald, who is writing his third novel, says that although this is Durrell’s only ghost story, animals still play a part.

“There’s a parrot, a canary and a dog and they all feature in the story — he couldn’t resist getting those in.”

l The Shadow in the Mirror is at the Mill at Sonning until Saturday, November 8. For more information, call the box office on 0118 969 8000 or visit millatsonning.com