The human mind is a remarkable but tricksy thing. It holds, in its murkiest corners, a primal fear for survival that can, perversely, transform a jacket hanging in the closet or a box under the bed into a hulking, monstrous thing. A shadowy threat whose baleful presence sets the heart racing once darkness has crept across the corners of our bedroom. This murderous projection, a strange quirk of our ancient makeup, has led us to hand down through the ages countless tales of frightful things that go bump in the night.
It’s a fact picked up on by Monsters lead Alison Whyte, raised in deceptively convivial fashion before the show gets underway, as if sitting with us by a fire, mug of hot chocolate in hand. The latest theatrical blockbuster helmed by Malthouse artistic director Matthew Lutton (Picnic at Hanging Rock), Monsters takes over the cavernous Merlyn Theatre. Whyte perches on the lip of set and lighting designer Paul Jackson’s vast staging that is, at first, mostly absent. Framed by a strip of brilliant white light blazing top and bottom, what lies between is unknowable.
Monsters, written by Emme Hoy (STC’s The Tenant of Wildefel Hall), invites us to imagine this void as a giant sinkhole that has opened inexplicably in a city street overnight, consuming an apartment complex. Whyte, a veteran of Lutton’s Cloudstreet adaptation who has also appeared in films including The Dressmaker, stands tremulous on its edge. She plans to venture deep into this abyss that has swallowed – hopefully still whole – her missing sister, as guided by the assistance of a caver. This second figure is never seen. Instead, Whyte narrates both sides of their dialogue as we descend into the unknown.
It’s a grand idea, drawing on real-life reports of these mysterious crevasses that claim our built environments from time to time and H.P. Lovecraft’s terrifying stories of malignant things lurking just below the surface of civilisation. And if Lutton’s staging of Hoy’s work were presented on a smaller scale, amplifying the cloying claustrophobia of such spaces, a narrated monologue would make more sense. But with Jackson’s subterranean set, all rock-like columns and gaping chasms only ever briefly illuminated in small glimpses of haunted corners, it’s an odd choice not to cast another performer as the caver. As a result, it leans a little too heavily on tell, rather than show, robbing some of Monster’s theatrical scope.
Thankfully, Whyte isn’t set entirely adrift. Lutton has collaborated with award-winning choreographer Stephanie Lake, who deploys three dancers – Samantha Hines, Kimball Wong and Josie Weise – to pick up the slack. Collectively they summon forth those sinister figures that lurk treacherously in our minds. Horror films have long leant on uncanny choreography to cast skittering, unnerving shapes with the human body that set our teeth chittering. Lake’s dextrous trio captures that creeping paranoia with physical contortions like werewolves caught mid-transformation. Deftly leaping headfirst into clefts that appear and then apparently vanish in Jackson’s set, these impossible shifts are amplified by his complementary lighting design, concealing and revealing in a pounding heartbeat the devilish details. This unnerving element of the play is strongest.
Is there something terrible down here preying on those foolhardy enough to venture too far from the light? Or is a lack of oxygen playing tricks with the mind of Whyte’s narrator, who becomes increasingly agitated? Whyte never quite steps convincingly up to this panic. Repeated words that should echo like desperate gasps amongst the stalactites overhead instead become a touch monotonous. It’s hard not to imagine what Pamela Rabe, billed for a run of this production lost to lockdowns last year, would have made of this unmooring. As with too many contemporary shows, blasts of electric distortion substitute for performance in the final run, with Marco Cher-Gibard’s initially subtle sound design, accompanied by a score from composer Rosalind Hall, tipping over into too much. In the end, Monsters is held aloft on the broad shoulders of Hines, Wong and Weise, a stronger work of dance, thanks to Lake, than theatre. But there are still plenty of scares to be had down here.
Monsters is playing at Merlyn Theatre until December 11. For more information and to book your tickets, head to the website.
