Horror movies onstage: The good, the bad and the head-spinningly awful
Paranormal Activity is the latest in a nerve-shredding line of screen chillers to make the leap into live arenas in front of living, breathing and often very terrified audiences. Here, we recall previous theatre horror productions that have resulted in either sweaty palms or damp squibs
Can a screen horror always make a successful transfer into theatres? In the resounding ‘no’ corner is 1988’s Carrie musical. A co-production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and written by the people behind Fame, it was based on Stephen King’s novel with elements dropped in from Brian De Palma’s 1976 film. In a world before the internet, miscommunication led to calamitous mistakes and it became one of Broadway’s biggest modern flops. Arguably the one upside is that its music was composed by the perfectly named Michael Gore.
With horror, timing is everything, as is the execution of sound design. In 2019, following the #MeToo movement, a fascinating and deeply affecting adaptation of Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio played in the intimate surroundings of Donmar Warehouse. Targeting patriarchal power structures in the film industry it struck a powerfully relevant note in its depiction of a male foley artist who loses his moral compass while creating the sound for an Italian giallo flick. On stage you watch the messy behind-the-scenes process of chopping watermelons and crunching celery, while bearing witness to the terrifying experience of a voice actress who is pushed to unacceptable extremes.
By blurring reality and fiction, Berberian Sound Studio confronted the responsibility of the artist with a searing and inescapable intensity. Likewise, Nadia Latif and Carmen Nasr’s recent Under The Shadow takes place in Tehran, amidst the late-80s Iran-Iraq conflict. While set in the same era as Babak Anvari’s supernatural horror film it speaks to modern times and the enduring horrors of war.
In 2013, Jack Thorne (creator of Adolescence) teamed up with John Tiffany to adapt the acclaimed Swedish vampire film Let The Right One In. In Tiffany’s production diary for The Guardian, he meticulously explained the weekly rehearsals in Glasgow and how they achieved the iconic finale. In Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 film, the budding romance between a bullied schoolboy and a vampire culminates in a gruesome swimming pool scene. How could they possibly pull this off in a live setting? Tiffany opted to include a large volume of water on stage for the young protagonist to be submerged in for three minutes. It was truly breathtaking theatre.
Having opened in 1989, The Woman In Black holds the record for the longest running West End horror stage adaptation. This chilling production is largely thanks to atmospheric storytelling that plunges the theatre into darkness and then plagues its audience with jump scares thanks to actors popping up in the stalls at unexpected moments. Adapted by John Pielmeier from William Friedkin’s classic 1973 stomach-churner and head-turner, The Exorcist stage version used similar effects and yet proved that sometimes you can’t simply recreate the magic of film on stage. That exploitative affair didn’t understand the meaning of subtext when dealing with sensitive themes. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s anthology horror series Inside No 9 made the jump (scare) from small screen to stage in order to commemorate their final set of TV episodes with a technically brilliant and darkly funny homage to horror that also poked fun at the audience.
And now, the Paranormal Activity theatre show is currently frightening the bejesus out of UK audiences. Playwright Levi Holloway has teamed up with Punchdrunk’s Felix Barrett to craft a Blumhouse-approved reinterpretation of the 2007 found-footage phenomenon. The best of the above adaptations used a theatre’s darkness to craft a tense ambience. With Paranormal Activity being all about noises and movements at night, this could be a genuine nail-biter.
Paranormal Activity is on tour until Saturday 12 June; main picture: Johan Persson.