Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Simon Callow, Anjli Mohindra, Susan Penhaligon, Joshua Oakes-Rogers.
It was turn of the 20th Century author M.R. James who asserted that the spectres within a ghost story should always have malevolent intent if the story is to work, if it is to prick the conscious of the reader and give them the type of scare in which boundaries are crossed between the world we see and the domain of the dead.
It is an assertion in which students of the horror and ghost story genres tend to valiantly strive to produce, a good ghost after all is one in which doesn’t quite raise the hairs on the back of the hand, it merely suggests that the connection between the living and the ones we have lost is merely a welcome one, that we have nothing to fear for the consequences of our folly and actions in the past.
It is in one of Britain’s best-known disciples of the ghost story genre, Mark Gatiss, that The Dead Room was a wonderful fit for the Christmas television schedules, a time of year when the mood is arguably heightened as we think on those we have lost during the previous 12 months, our emotions are bombarded by memories, our own desires to spend one last moment in the arms of those we loved, it is no wonder that loss at this time of year can bring forth the notions of malicious traces in the apparitions before us, that a presence is not always covered in wrapping paper and with joyful tidings for the season.
The Dead Room makes perfect use of the symbolic confession in which a good ghost story thrives, the air of tension caught between the truth and the need for self-preservation, and for Aubrey Judd, it is a confession caught in a place where sound itself becomes an empty vacuum, a representative of the void between the two realms, the living and their transgressions, the dead and their revenge.
Simon Callow has always been a reliable, and passionate actor, anybody who witnessed his performance in the one-man show Juvenilia in 2014 as part of the Edinburgh Festival will attest to his striking presence on stage and his ability in which to hold an audience’s attention with stern conviction and as Aubrey Judd, narrator of tales for audio drama, that conviction is paramount, the sense of belief is upheld as the malevolence becomes clear, and not even a spiritual confession can save his soul.
Mark Gatiss’ story is one that stirs the nerves, not steeling it against the inevitable but slowly tearing the walls down between the small sliver of reality between the two states of emotion, a tough love from a true follower of the faith. The Dead Room is awash with vibrancy and dedication to the truth of the Ghost Story genre.
Ian D. Hall