Writer: Olivia Foan
Director: Olivia Munk
An old-fashioned ghost story is the last kind of show you’d expect at the VAULT Festival. Set in late Victorian England, The Tinker’s plot may be slight but it’s certainly atmospheric and it’s a credit to the actors that the audience buys into the play, which follows tried and tested conventions. All the hallmarks are here: a snowstorm; a stranger; creepy children and a mournful tune plonked out on the piano.
Whiskey magnate Frank and his wife Evelyn have moved to the countryside where a storm now rages outside their house. Frank has adjusted well to the move, but his wife is troubled, still grieving for the loss of their child. She’s not interested in the neighbours who come to visit her. The play begins with Frank suggesting that they invite these neighbours over for dinner one day, but his plans are interrupted by a knock on the door.
The mysterious man calls himself a tinker, a man, he says, who wanders around the country fixing things. He’s willing to fix the piano in the couple’s living room if they will give him shelter for the evening. It slowly becomes apparent that he’s not alone. A boy travels with him; he’s in the barn with the horses. Could this boy be the son the couple have lost?
The story is very slow; details are revealed incrementally. As Evelyn, Lauren O’Leary spends a lot of time staring into space; Keon Martial-Phillip is Frank, the patient loving husband. But as the play continues, their roles switch and Evelyn becomes more assertive bargaining with the stranger as Frank cowers behind the piano. Giles Abbott plays the mysterious Irishman, alternating between a desperate chancer and a persistent nemesis.
The set and the sound design place the story firmly in the Gothic, and the costumes, especially that of Frank who looks very dapper, are impressive for a show with such a short run. Also Gothic is the narrative, which has echoes of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Daphne Du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now. However, the pace of the play does drag a little, especially as relatively little happens in the 60 minutes. There is also some business with a coat that might need some further explanation if it is to be understood as a metaphor.
But there is promise here, and its politically incorrect title notwithstanding, Olivia Foan’s play could certainly bring more chills to a winter evening.
Reviewed on 18 February 2023
