Brooding characters and menacing movements was assault on senses

IT’S always exciting seeing a brand new play so The Whistling at the Mill promised much and delivered a great deal of it. And to the theatre’s great credit it’s an adaptation of a story from a local author — Reading’s Rebecca Netley.

This ambitious premiere features a young governess hired to take care of a mute girl on a remote Scottish island. It’s her job to coax the girl to speak, but there are countless obstacles in her way: a demanding mistress of the house, a truculent servant and a mystery which no one wants to talk about.

If we took The Taming of the Shrew, a bit of Jane Eyre, a bit of Agatha Christie, and a bit of The Wicker Man and boiled them up to create a new stew this would probably be it. Gothic would sum up the whole production with a dark and brooding set and all the characters dressed only in grey or black.

This dourness is reinforced by a sound design which constantly threatens with drones, thunder and keening birds.

The mood is set at the opening with a thunder clap and dark shapes like Macbeth’s witches emerging through dry ice from the background. This darkness never leaves us.

Rebecca Forsyth’s governess, Elspeth, deserves special mention: her character is in every scene and she dominates the play with a top level performance. It’s a demanding role with a mountain of dialogue and movement but she negotiates it expertly.

But the whole cast is faultless: Raghad Chaar’s resentful Greer, Heather Jackson’s all-knowing wiccan Ailsa, Jonny McGarrity’s doctor, philandering priest and storekeeper, Stephanie Farrell’s stern Violet and Susie Riddell’s deceptive Bridget.

Nadia Kramer’s Hettie had no words but looked and acted fearsome. And a special mention for 12-year-old Sophie Bidgood, one of three young girls playing Mary. She had a huge amount of movement to negotiate in a demanding role.

It’s obvious that the adaptors, Duncan Abel and Rachel Wagstaff, the director, Joseph Pitcher, and the set designer, Diego Pitarch, have piled everything they can think of into this show.

It teems with movement and menace and can be an all out assault on the senses — and isn’t that what we go to the theatre for?

But at times perhaps there was overload — too much of the sound design making the threat become commonplace; sometimes over-elaborate scene changes making them mini-scenes in themselves.

If some of this could be trimmed it would intensify the drama even more; then who knows, maybe it will become the next Woman in Black?

But this is a play in its infancy and thus still learning and it was a privilege to be present at its birth.

Until Saturday, November 16.

Mike Rowbottom