WHAT: The Fright Before Christmas
WHEN: 11 December 2021
WHERE: The Space (269 Westferry Rd, London E14 3RS)
PRICE: £13 — £16
OUTDOORS: No
OUR RATING: Do It!
As fans of the creepy and macabre we firmly agree that Christmas is the perfect time of year for ghost stories in front of the fire. As such, we scoured London events for anything dark and sinister this holiday season, and lo and behold we came across The Fright Before Christmas, a one-night only unique horror storytelling experience.
Presented by Harpy Productions and Danse Macabre Productions, a half-dozen teams spun six new ten-minute terrifying tales in front of both an audience and a select group of judges. This was the first time we’ve been to The Space on the Isle of Dogs, located inside a former church. The set up for the production was quite sparse, with a tiny handful of props per performance and a few lights above the stage, but across the board all six pieces had remarkable sound and light design for what they had on hand. To tie in the night’s theme there were several small tables set up for the audience, all topped with festive decorations including holly and, of course, a skull.
Charismatic host Lady Aria Grey led the audience through the night, introducing each piece and then inviting thoughts from three horror judges at the end of each performance. The concept of having judges review the pieces was novel — we’d never attended an event like that. Yet we felt that while the role of a host was essential, the role of the judges was a bit ineffective. While interesting to hear their thoughts, it took the mood out of the night and in the long run could have done without them.
But let’s talk about the most important aspect of the night, the shows themselves! Writer Sarah Hamilton’s All I Want for Christmas…Is You started off the night right, telling the story of a woman alone in a house at Christmas when a stranger knocks on her door, asking for shelter from a storm. While we enjoyed the story and the twists and turns throughout, the sound design supporting the storm outside the house led to the downfall of the second half of the piece. With the sound so loud and the actors quite quiet, we couldn’t make out everything they said in the final few minutes of the play — exactly when it was quite clear that the twists were ramping up! In the end we turned to each other to see if the other understood what was said and what happened at the end, to no avail.
Next up was Jane Morris’s Eight Legs, Eight Arms. Exploring the very real threats women face on a daily basis, this piece framed its harrowing subject through the lens of an octopus, in a Cthulhu-esque twist that pitted eight-legged beings against each other (whether spiders or octopodes). Whilst intriguing conceptually, we felt the writing needed further polishing in order to truly reach its potential.
Moving back from the mouth of madness, Rachel O’Neill’s They Comes presents us with a couple who are not at all in agreement when it comes to the subject of having children. This crisis is precipitated by the traditionalist pushing of the husband’s grandmother — but gestation occurs (piecemeal) regardless of wishes. At times, the performance felt surprisingly ordinary, but this is not to detract from the rather unexpected (and unpleasant) climax.
Ben Whitehead’s The Sister Inside was our personal favourite of the night, and won second place after the audience and judge voting process. Approaching the stage covered in a white sheet and white top hat, Whitehead, performing the piece in addition to writing it, appeared a bit ridiculous, and his facial expressions interacted well to the audience’s reaction to his costume. Whitehead brought an amazing piece of Victorian storytelling in rhyming couplets, eliciting both laughs as well as horrifying silences. Whitehead is a seasoned performer and had us in the palm of his hand for the whole ten minutes with his tale of a woman living with her sibling writhing inside her. Whitehead also had to cope with a rowdy audience member interrupting his piece several times, and he did so masterfully.
Freddie Valdosta’s Flip the Switch (performed by Freddie Gilbraith and Oscar Koronka) was the night’s popular favourite — and chillingly so. A deeply disturbing portrait of the internal voice that is OCD, the tension is soon escalated to horrific heights, ending in a place that leaves one questioning the true nature of that “voice in your head”.
The final piece of the night was Rachel Bellman’s Tooting Bec Asylum, a story about a woman living on top of what used to be a morgue in an old hospital. The woman and her boyfriend start to see ghosts of the elderly and putrefying ghosts (and start ageing themselves). Oddly enough, we had that day rewatched the Tales from the Crypt episode Only Sin Deep — a bit of a coincidence! We appreciated such a traditional horror story, but with a rather predictable ending which we hoped would turn at some point, we don’t think this was the strongest of the night.
Final Thoughts: With an excellent selection of well-staged and produced short plays, The Fright Before Christmas does not disappoint and has genres for all types of horror and ghost fans. Given the general lack of horror material in a theatre setting, it is most refreshing to see new works developed around it. It is worth noting that whilst billed as a 90 minute set of performances, the entire event stretched to over 120 minutes (with a 20 minute interval). Whilst fine by us, we think it might be challenging for scheduling purposes. That’s one whole lot of horror!
