REVIEW: HAUNTED SHADOWS The Gothic Tales of Edith Nesbit at White Bear Theatre 28 Jan – 8 Feb 2025

‘Masterfully performed with atmosphere aplenty’ ★★★

Over a hundred years ago, little Edith Nesbit, the author of well-known, charming children’s classics such as The Railway Children, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Treasure Seekers lived with her family in Kennington, South London. There’s a pleasing geographical and spiritual resonance that she should now be resurrected at Kennington’s White Bear Theatre, near where she once played, and her fertile imagination was nurtured. 

The focus of this one woman play, masterfully performed by Clare Louise Amias, are Nesbit’s spooky, gothic tales for which she is lesser known. Elliott Amias, Clare’s brother, and associate researcher spent fifteen years exploring the British Library collections and University of Tulsa’s, E Nesbit archives to uncover 40 forgotten supernatural stories penned for magazines and newspapers of the time. A Strange Experience is one of these and alongside, The Shadow and The Pavilion, comprise the trio of stories told in Haunted Shadows.

The Edith Nesbit of Haunted Shadows is statuesque and severe looking. Amias channels the author as a clipped and British Mrs. Danvers, à la Rebecca. She marches on stage in a rustle of black satin. Her high-necked Victorian gown designed by Anna Sørensen Sargent offsets a pale, ghostly complexion and appears to change colour as it reflects the different lighting choices. For one hour and 35 minutes (with an interval) Nesbit regales the audience with tales of diabolical apparitions, malign spirits, possessed trees and decapitated bodies.

Directed by Jonathan Rigby, the black box theatre offers a suitably dark, Victorian framework and there’s atmosphere aplenty for this A Monkey with Cymbals production. Steve Lowe’s lighting casts ghoulish, unnatural light at moments of high drama while Keri Chesser’s sound design magics evil cackles and ominous sighs from the bowels of the stage. Amias tells her stories in the way that ghost stories have been told for millennia, with words, lots of words, as she paints images for the audience’s imagination to conjure feelings of dread and uncertainty. 

How well the stories hold up for contemporary audiences or horror lovers is open to debate. These are loyally told long, gothic tales. Characters have complicated double-barrelled names; story lines are verbose and convoluted. What is interesting is where these stories came from. There are references to a lonely childhood, where terror would seize little Edith, who would jump at her own shadow and feel tremendous fear of stuffed animals or at the catacombs in France. The physical, visceral feeling of fear is palpably described.

These insights into Edith Nesbit’s life provide the necessary hooks into the stories. This human connection to the writer makes sense of the woman speaking directly to an audience on stage as opposed to the stories being read on the page. Where did this obsession with mortality and fear of death come from? Sudden, terrible, or impending death is a recurring theme in the stories, as they were for everyone in this generation, yet the audience are none the wiser about this central question that drove her dark tales. 

I was left wondering about her family relationships and if dramaturgically, fiction interwoven with fact, might have provided a more compelling, dynamic structure. There can be no denying Nesbit was a remarkable woman who left a fantastic legacy to the world. While Haunted Shadows brings her dark stories into the spotlight, the crux of the author remains obscured.

Read LPT interview with actor Claire Louise Amias and director Jonathan Rigby here

HAUNTED SHADOWS The Gothic Tales of Edith Nesbit at White Bear Theatre, 138 Kennington Park Road, London, SE11 4DJ

28 Jan – 8 Feb 2025

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