Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Bell, Book and Candle’, which is at The New Vic in Newcastle Under Lyme until Saturday 28th February.
It’s Christmas Eve in London in the 1970’s. There’s a modernistic silver Christmas tree dominating a classy, glass and black leather apartment. Spooky Tubular Bells-era music haunts the stage…onto which strides the smouldering Sloane Square Gillian; a girl with a cat basket and a bewitching secret. Oddly she can control the electric lights by simply breathing in or out. And so can her brother … and her aunt….
A rather hopeless Erich Von Daniken-type author is summoned. He’s writing a book about witches in present day London. “They’re everywhere,” he opines. “Right under our noses.” Poor chap. He’s very likely to publish and be damned.
John Van Druten’s classic tale about a witch who falls in love is a real gem….and moving it up from the 1950s into the 1970s gives director Gwenda Hughes so much fun. The family of witches are naturally ‘apart’ from the rest of society…and parallels can be draw with the distinct separateness of the gay community at the time, and indeed young women’s daunting decisions between career and marriage.
Gillian feels her specialness very deeply and, of course, it has fringe benefits. If you want to seduce your next-door neighbour you can cast spells on him down your trim phone. But it’s the responsibilities that make the meat of the play. Having ‘three wishes’ is great…but you must be careful what you wish for. Love can turn to tears – and if a witch cries, she loses her powers.
I felt very much in Noel Coward territory here…both in plot and style. It’s essentially a painful love story across a class divide. The emotions are raw; the deceit hurtful; the miss match ultimately unworkable. The dialogue has Coward’s searing wit – with a lot more biting comedy and extra angst. Great play is made of the witchcraft metaphors. Gillian’s seduced victim is “spellbound”. It’s been an “enchanting” evening. I’m sure The Master would have seen the original and have approved.
He’d also have been drooling over the acting acumen of Emma Pallant (pictured). She is simply superb as the contrite, conniving Gillian whose steely heart falls apart when love really does set in. Pallant is elegantly gawky…stalking the stage consumed by the big question; to tell or not to tell. It’s a really tense passage of the play which compels you to consider what you would do – if you happened to be a witch in love.
The comedy characters step neatly back from being overplayed. Janice McKenzie’s Aunt Queenie has a Beatles wig and a Julian Clary smirk. And whilst I’m casting aspersions, Mark Chatterton plays the hapless author like an unholy prodigy of Alan Carr and Harry Worth. His ability to be irrepressible, whilst clearly out of his depth, would also have had Coward reaching for his ‘Spotlight’. Adam Barlow is suitably self possessed and truculent in his power struggle with his sister – and I was amazed to discover in the bar afterwards that his 70s hair is real. Geoffrey Breton flamboyantly covers the extensive ground from helpless victim to vitriolic ‘ex’ … and the cat appears to mew in all the right places.
All in all, it’s a very charming. I was entranced. Opps; sorry!
Photo : Andrew Billington
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