Snake in the Grass

Alan Ayckbourn’s Snake In The Grass delves into intriguing and often juxtaposed areas, creating something quite remarkable.  With a darkness poisoning its way throughout the story, humour brilliantly refuses to die quietly, and this push and pull effect beautifully manipulates the audience into a stupor of heady revelations, demanding we are culpable witnesses to what is to come.  We become guilty by association, and with the production playing out in the intimate ‘in the round’ of the Octagon Theatre, there is a sense that you are not watching a show but eavesdropping on a real time unpredictable and dangerous situation.  As Annabel returns to her childhood home following the death of her estranged father, she is ambushed by Alice, his former carer, perhaps a disastrous blessing for she interrupts the ghosts that are wanting to play hide and seek with Annabel’s sanity.  This house clearly holds secretive horrors for Annabel, yet her defensive, clipped, and brash demeanour towards Alice ensures they remain buried.  For now.  Alice believes she has been wrongly dismissed by Miriam, Annabels younger and wilder sister, the sister who found herself trapped in this house of secrets. Alice intends to blackmail the sisters for she believes her former employee was indeed murdered by Miriam.  With Annabel primed for sole inheritance of his estate, Alice is requesting the lot as compensation.  As ghosts haunt the living, solutions to Alice’s demands become more turbulent and erratic.  They unleash spiralling chain reactions that have an unhinged life force of their own.  We watch helplessly as Annabel’s armour is splintered, leaving her buried alive in the fear, pain, and secrets of her past.  As an unstable Miriam divulges her own twisted secrets, we catch glimpses of the evil they have contorted within her.  All we can do is hold our breath as she plays puppeteer with life and death, right and wrong, and grapple through the battle between head and heart as to whether Miriam’s plan is justified, or whether she is just a Snake In The Grass. 
   

This compact cast of three do a remarkable job of presenting complicated, multi-layered, and complex characters.  They carry the inhumane experiences within them yet play with the personal protection they have built for themselves, whether that be through a dark humour, defensiveness, blackmail and corruption, or a deluded innocence.  Sue Cleaver (Coronation Street, Sister Act, Dinnerladies, Loose Women) is fantastic with her razor-sharp tongue, slicing through the chaos and delivering perfectly pitched humour to perfection so that it never feels coarse or disrespectful of the themes at large.  She starts by concealing her traumatic past just enough to disengage in company, but alone, we immediately see the mask slip and the fear strangle her whole.  It is fantastic acting and as the story evolves and her past strangles her present, the transformation is exceptional.  She spars with electric energy with Nicola Stephenson (Emmerdale, Waterloo Road, Our Country’s Good, War Horse) as Miriam, creating a tantalising toxic chemistry that fuels the drama and tension. Nicola Stephenson as Miriam follows a contrasting and opposing trajectory to Annabel, beginning with every raw emotion and nerve laid bare, seemingly erratic, vulnerable and naive.  As the play develops, this projection is morphed into manipulation and coercive control.  It is slick, sly, and successfully achieved through another fantastic performance.  Her darkness dominates the second act, danger bleeding from every pore. Lisa Zahira (Odyssey 84, Trouble In Butetown, GRENFELL, The Kite Runner) completes the cast as Alice, providing a steely determination against the two sisters.  She is forthright, cool and composed in contradiction to the chaos of the sisters, and unmoved by their emotional displays.  Her strength is that she makes her blackmail seem so reasonable, for she is utterly rooted in her own sense of wrong and right, whether this be immoral or not.  Her presence is a catalyst for what is to take place, and her moments of holding all the power prove to be transformative.  I will say no more as no spoilers, but you will definitely see two sides to this outstanding performance.

Directed by Francesca Goodridge, the choice to perform in the round is an absolute winner.  It places the audience in the heart of the story, literally pulling you in, tipping you off the edge of your seat, as we symbolically witness this layered story from every angle.  This show is not afraid to find humour in the darkest places or weave everyday moments into the horrors of trauma and death.  With set and costume by Hayley Grindle, the skeleton metal frame of the house hangs eerily from above, invaded by the stark, bare roots of a tree, once again symbolic of life trying to grow in the darkest of places but not quite succeeding.  A splintered rocking chair hangs in the rafters, with only a wind chime and a lantern for company.  The stage is a raised unit, drenched in red light and crisp, dying leaves, concealing a trap door that we see open with a trepidation that seems to swallow you whole.  The lighting is designed by Laura Howard and dances as echoes of the past, rippling through the wrought iron house frame and fences that keep evil locked out but equally locked in.  The lighting slices through with neon flashes, sudden black outs, and teasing segments of intensity, constantly matching the mood or indeed crating it.  Composition and sound design by Russell Ditchfield controls our heart rate with ominous chords building in intensity, sudden bangs, voices echoed from the past, and a melody of horror tricks and treats that will catch even the hardy unawares.

Snake In The Grass feels immersive in the sense that you are captivated in the moment, your senses manipulated by a superb creative team, your emotions and free will held hostage by skilled direction and performances.  Whether it be the plummeting tennis balls that viciously appear from nowhere, the raw emotions of reliving a traumatic past, or the heady mix of thrill and guilt as we witness the consequences and cyclic malevolence of abuse and trauma, you will suspend disbelief and live in the moment.  It will make you think about justification.  It will challenge your own boundaries of whether something wrong can become right, and it will keep surprising you until the very end, with multiple twists, turns, and toxic shocks.  Snake In The Grass dances across the edges of various genres, refusing to be tied down and labelled.  It runs its teasing fingers through the realms of drama, comedy, dark comedy, ghost stories, and thriller, twisting in themes of family, secrets, memory, ghosts, abuse, relationships, and mental health.  It is frightening, funny, and multi-faceted.  The fractured blend of all these elements entwined together result in a tantalising, twisty reflection of humanity, keeping you hooked right until the very end.  Every nuance of this production comes together perfectly, ensuring you will be on the edge of your seat throughout, braced for the next fright, the next revelation, and trying to decipher what is real, what is other worldly, and what is broken memory.  This is theatre as its true self.  Actors, complimented by creatives, holding your attention and pulling you into a new realm, keeping you captive until the very…….last…….moment.  Snake In The Grass is a hauntingly good night.       

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