By Anne-Louise Fortune

The short stories of Lovecraft are particularly suited to one-person storytelling. Most are told from, or can easily be adapted to be told from, the point of view of a central protagonist, who relates the otherworldly happenings they have experienced with a growing sense of horror. H.P. Lovecraft: Gallery of Screams presented two of Lovecraft’s shorts: Pickman’s Model to begin, and then, following a short interval, The Music of Eric Zann. The stories are told by R M Lloyd Parry, also known as ‘Nunkie’, who has developed quite a reputation for reciting the stories of English author M R James’ ghost stories.

One-person story-telling is a potentially tricky endeavour. And in the context of fringe theatre comes with a unique set of variables around the size and nature of the performance space and considerations of what technical facilities might be available. Productions need to be scalable to allow for those occasions where a full set of ‘whistles and bells’ can be drawn on, with clever use of lighting and sound, and, at the other end of the scale, to allow for one person, with one light, to be still able to creatively convey the story being told. There is a vast difference between a story told around a campfire and the same story told on the stage of the London Palladium.

Here at Starburst Towers, we’ve seen scalable one-person storytelling before, with Michael Sabbaton’s The Call of Cthulhu, an example of a production that slotted into different-sized venues with aplomb. Emily Carding’s one-person Richard III works in a similar way: it can be performed under the fluorescent lighting of a village hall but can add flourishes in an Edinburgh Fringe venue decked out with a full sound and lighting rig.

Parry is obviously deeply familiar with the tropes of these stories, and he’s chosen two brilliant stories with which to begin his exploration of the Lovecraftian canon. However, in the context of this venue and the expectations that come as part of being part of a festival, the presentation failed to measure up to the quality of the source material. Parry’s delivery was too static for the space, and the lighting rig in the theatre could have been used to great effect to create a sinister atmosphere, rather than the stories being delivered in total darkness, except for an anglepoise lamp, a torch and the light from a slide projector. This total lack of effective illumination meant that the audience, seated at least ten feet from the performer, struggled to see all of Parry’s facial expressions.

Even one-person performances benefit from collaboration with other creatives, and here the addition of a script editor, a director, and a lighting and sound designer would have meant that the slowly growing horror of Lovecraft’s words could have been crafted into an effective and efficiently delivered production. As it is, Pickman’s Model is overlong and requires an edit to retain the audience’s attention, and The Music of Eric Zann could do with a structural edit to avoid a big plot twist being revealed in the opening moments of the performance.

There is a good idea here that requires refinement to be truly effective as a theatrical performance.