REVIEW: BLACK CAT by Edgar Allan Poe at King’s Head Theatre 21 – 25 March 2023

‘Captivating and chilling, it is a well-constructed telling of Poe’s haunting story.’ ★★★★

This is a bold and well-crafted piece of theatre. Keaton Guimarães-Tolley delivers Poe’s short gothic horror in a 45 minute animated monologue, to Catherine Warnock’s haunting musical accompaniment.

The piece is well-paced, with builds and falls in tension well-distributed. Guimarães-Tolley gives a raw and committed performance, the openness of which offers an effective contrast with Warnock’s guarded performance. His physical theatre is clear and consistent. At times, however, the piece falls into similar sequences acted on the floor, the repetition of which do not serve to nuance the narrative perspective or to drive the plot. His interactions with the audience are well-timed and amusing; the comedy is particularly unsettling, confronting the audience with an antagonist with whom they can laugh. However, I felt that a number of the piece’s peaks reach breaking point too early, leaving little room for variation to distinguish between the numerous narrative climaxes and the eventual denouement. The topography of the delivery could perhaps benefit from more control at earlier climaxes so as to allow those later to be distinguishable from one another in tone and gravity, and to maintain a tension through what is held back unto the last. There is also little use made of silence and of quiet until the end of the piece. In some ways what is so eery about Poe’s story is the voicelessness of any other character, and so much of the fear lingers in those spaces of quiet, which also add a balancing contrast to the pace and fury of violent sequences.

Warnock’s musical prowess across oboe, flute and violin is exceptional and genuinely refreshed a well-known the story. Throughout the piece it feels as much as if her music is directing the action as it does the action is directing the music. This offers an interesting dynamic in the conflicting relationships firstly between her and the speaker as husband and wife and secondly between the speaker (and perhaps speech) and her music, somehow reflective of the speaker’s instability throughout the piece. Warnock’s ability to physicalise her character emotionally and physically without – literally – missing a beat is phenomenal. The composition is excellent, characterising space and tone as youthful and carefree or drunk and haunting with equal ease and clarity.

The bare set is somewhat self-reflective: Poe’s story revolves around absent imaginings which lead to tension, conflict and action; therefore, that we the audience have to imagine what was not really there in the build of tension conflict and action provides a neat reflexivity. The lighting design is menacing and its changeovers subtle. The actors make good use of an unstraightforward space, engaging the audience equally across the auditorium.

I was genuinely unnerved for much of the performance; it is an uncomfortably intimate space in which to explore a psychological breakdown revolving around animal cruelty uxoricide, and as such all the more effective. Captivating and chilling, it is a well-constructed retelling of Poe’s haunting story.

Photo credit: Alexander Atherton

Black Cat at the King’s Head Theatre

21^st-25^th March

Directed by Selwin Hulme-Teague

Composed by Catherine Warnock

Produced by Penelope Diaz

Box Office https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/the-black-cat

Reviewed by Basil Lockwood