After his success with Ghost Stories, Jeremy Dyson returns to the Lyric Hammersmith to tell some more dark and ominous tales, this time from the pen of Roald Dahl.
Dahl may be known for his hugely popular stories for children, but with his 1979 collection Tales Of The Unexpected the writer pushed his already black humour into more disturbing territory, making it more suited to an older audience. This new stage adaptation, entitled Twisted Tales, enacts five of these vividly imaginative stories with a cast of six bringing alive Dahl’s unique roll-call of characters.
The gruesome yet witty tone of the evening is set with the first story, The Landlady, in which a 17-year-old boy is lured into a B&B where he may well end up staying longer than he intended. With grey hair piled onto her head and a sinister charm, Selina Griffiths’s landlady is a typically eccentric Dahl creation whose appearance masks a darker reality.
The evening continues with Mrs Bixby And The Colonel’s Coat, in which a couple’s mutual duplicity is exposed thanks to a fur coat, the story of a young holidaymaker challenged to a gruesome bet by a stranger (Man From The South) and the tale of cancer-riddled William, whose still-living brain is removed from his body by an experimental doctor after he dies (William And Mary).
Dark though they are, all these stories are funny as well as grotesque, and the talented cast draws out the humour from each character. Among them, Alexandra Maher’s downbeat pawnbroker and Nick Fletcher’s goading gambler Mr Palacios are highlights, while Griffiths garners many laughs as the deceitful Mrs Bixby and the widow Mrs Pearl who, on realising her once-dominant husband now cannot talk back, finally begins to enjoy their marriage immensely.
Dyson holds these tales together by weaving another around them. Galloping Foxley tells the story of commuter Perkins, whose ordered world is interrupted by a newcomer on the train, who, in this adaptation, regales Perkins and his fellow commuters with stories. Finally, Perkins has a moment of clarity about the stranger and, turning the tables on him, tells his own tale of the torment he suffered as a schoolboy at the hands of an older boy named Foxley. This final narrative is even bleaker than the rest, made all the more disturbing by the knowledge that Dahl claimed it was based on truth.
At just 80 minutes, Twisted Tales zips along at quite a pace, helped by tight directing from Polly Findlay. Thoughtfully adapted and well acted, the show reminds us of the quirky, ingenious and totally unique style of Roald Dahl.
CB