Sitting In The Cheap Seats

Jonathan Grant’s Dracula looms over Michael Gondelle as Jonathan Harker We may be a little more than a week away from Halloween but Humdrum are offering up a classic slice of horror at The Spring to get people in the mood. As director James George points out, Dracula might no longer be a story that truly shocks, but there is still enough here to make the audience uneasy and at its heart this is a classic story regardless of whether it will make you jump out of your seat.

Stephen Lowe ’s Touched is a curious play… flat on the page, it comes alive on the stage! Lowe’s story of a trio of sisters, their friend and family and the curious time between VE day and the end of the war perfectly highlights the struggles these women had to face, and the freedom they were about to lose!

The BFG is perhaps the most beloved of Roald Dahl’s brilliantly twisted stories for children (though theatre fans may have fallen for Matilda in recent years). It’s certainly one that people keep coming back to as the forthcoming movie adaptation (starring Mark Rylance – which excites us a great deal) will attest. I’m fascinated to see how Humdrum bring such a big story into the confines of The Spring’s cosy studio theatre.

How do you approach a play when the film based on it is steeped in generations of lavish praise and is a regular on “favourite” and “best” lists? Well, if  Humdrum ’s take on Arsenic & Old Lace is anything to go by the answer is to pepper your cast with people who’ve never seen the movie and then let their imaginations run wild.