Writer: Darkstuff Productions
Director: Danielle Mcllven
Possession starts well. Zelda and Kurt have been to the local village pub in Dartmoor. They’ve rented a cottage for three months giving Zelda time to organise her photography exhibition opening soon in Exeter. Meanwhile, Kurt loafs around the house reading Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. On this night, one of their last in Dartmoor before they move into his dead mother’s house, they are drunk and a bit high from the dodgy cocaine Kurt bought from a man in the pub. It promises to be a long night.
Too long, in fact. Running at 75 minutes, there is not quite enough material to keep the interest keen. Much of the time is given up to the pair arguing and through these quarrels the audience begins to piece together the basis of their relationship, which is still fairly new. Kurt has money while Zelda has talent. With Kurt’s financial support, Zelda can stop working her 9-5 and focus on her art. She’s lively and good with people; He’s spiky, more so since he stopped taking his pills.
However, the play gets more exciting when Zelda agrees to foretell the future with the help of a mirror and a candle. With Kurt following instructions laid down by Elizabeth I’s occultist John Dee, Zelda sits in front of a mirror that comically looks like it was bought in Superdrug and begins the magic spell.
Wisely, Darkstuff Productions veers away from the jump scares of 2.22 A Ghost Story, but the lack of atmosphere created on stage is disappointing. The light design is reduced to a binary of lights on and lights off and the sound design – rain and rumbling thunder – inexplicably stops halfway through the play with the sounds of cars and conversations of people outside The Space making it difficult to believe that we are in the wilds of Dartmoor.
While the writers are more interested in a different meaning of possession, rather than a demonic one, there still could be more attention given to the possibility that futures can be told using the dark arts. Possession could be more ambiguous. The actual possession in the story comes as a satisfying shock, but it’s not clear how the audience is meant to respond to the ending which seems too one-sided and suggests that exploitation of mental health issues is a viable one for the sake of art.
Claire Morgan and Arran Hawkins give good performances as the unlikeable Zelda and Kurt, although their bickering sheds no light on Kurt’s favoured poets. Surely W. B. Yeats would have been a better choice with his famous interest in the occult and automatic writing? And we learn nothing about Dee’s strange blend of astrology and science or his belief in scrying, which Zelda tries to recreate with the looking-glass.
With no atmosphere under the bright lights or discourse on clairvoyance, Possession is stranded between an eerie thriller and a more modern play about coercive control. It’s not an incompatible mix – Jane Eyre pulled it off marvellously – but Blackstuff Productions might need to lean into the Gothic that little bit more.
Runs until 5 July 2024
