Edith In The Dark

This was my first visit to The Undercroft, a performance space under Serpentine Green shopping centre in Peterborough. Usually home to Eastern Angles, it is a large space which Peterborough Mask Theatre have sectioned off to create a small performance venue with tiered seating for about 70. This evening’s performance was well-attended with an audience of varying ages. 

Director Helen McCay and the cast of three have done a wonderful job. The plot revolves around Edith Nesbit, author of The Railway Children, who is throwing a Christmas party. However there is no festive cheer here. We learn that Edith has suffered personal tragedy with the loss of her child. She is raising her husband’s illegitimate children as her own and also recounts a horror from her childhood when she was taken to a crypt by her mother. The author who made her name writing for children appears to have a disdain for them following the aforementioned tragedies throughout her life. Fittingly, Act two opens with a reading from a version of The Railway Children that we are all unfamiliar with where urine soaks the children’s legs after they narrowly miss being hit by a train. 

Mr Guasto, a gate crasher at Edith’s Christmas party, hopes for a private reading from The Railway Children, Edith suggests instead reading from some of her earlier works which explored ghosts, vampires and the supernatural. From here on in the trio perform a series of short stories acting out the numerous parts therein, affording the actors a wonderful platform to play multiple characters traversing romance, horror and comedy. My favourite section was the second short story, a tale of Amelia and Ernestina, two friends who pursue the same man and end up as vampires. This tale featured superb comic acting by all three performers which was enhanced by playing a female as the Colonel love interest and a male as one of the female friends. 

As Edith Nesbit, Emma Goldberg takes on an iconic role with an unenviable enormous amount of script to learn. There were a few small mistakes (and I am hugely impressed that there weren’t more given the amount of script!) but Emma always recovered very well and the audience were in safe hands with this talented leading lady. 

Claire Rowbottom plays Nesbit’s maid Biddy Thricefold. Claire displays a formidable aptitude for comedy and threw us numerous titbits of comic relief throughout what would have otherwise been a seriously eerie evening of ghost stories. 

Phil Lewis who was so superb as Banquo in last year’s production of Macbeth was utterly brilliant in the role of Mr Guasto. Phil displays great command of the stage and a phenomenal talent for characterisation, switching from ghostly man to annoying woman with a schizophrenic seamlessness. His diction and projection are superb, equally matched with excellent presence and physicality. I cannot imagine that a professional production of this play would find a better Mr Guasto. 

Sound and lighting by Tim Bold were both used very effectively throughout the play, of note the shadow effects in the final stages contributed superbly to heightening the intensity of fear in the audience ahead of the final big reveal. The set and props by John Crisp were good on the whole for this makeshift space, however I did notice a barcode on the bottom of the glass Biddy was drinking from which seemed out of place for 1909. Likewise Pentatonix’s rendition of Silent Night playing at the end felt anachronistic given the period of the piece. However, on the whole this was a good production by Peterborough Mask Theatre with three very good performances. Congratulations to the cast, crew and production team on another good show.

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