CURSE OF THE
WEREWOLF
A MONSTER MUSICAL by Ken Hill
Music by Ian Armit, Carl Zeller and Alasdair MacNeil
Lyrics by Ken Hill
Venue: Theatre Royal Stratford East 1994
Directed by Ken Hill
A MONSTER MUSICAL by Ken Hill
Music by Ian Armit, Carl Zeller and Alasdair MacNeil
Lyrics by Ken Hill
Venue: Theatre Royal Stratford East 1994
Directed by Ken Hill
Cast in order of appearance
| The Old Baron | Steven Pacey |
| Pastor Schneidhuber | Tyler Butterworth |
| D’Arcy | Robin Nedwell |
| Mrs Bancroft | Judith Bruce |
| Dr Bancroft | Reginald Marsh |
| Kitty | Diana Morrison |
| Ramsey | Tyler Butterworth |
| Ingeborg | Toni Palmer |
| Professor Steiner | Terrence Hardiman |
| Inspector Kruger | Bogdan Kominowski |
| Martin von Heilmann | Steven Pacey |
| Frau Gessler | Toni Palmer |
| Ernst the Hunter | Tyler Butterworth |
|
ACT ONE
SCENE 1 "A Prologue" Walpurgisdorf Church, 1892 SCENE 2 "Antics in an Asylum": Walpurgisdorf Castle, 1922 1. WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SOME FUN Kitty, Bancroft, D'Arcy, Mrs Bancroft, Ramsey 2. WHAT EVERYBODY THINKS D'Arcy SCENE 3 "A Meeting By Moonlight" Kitty's Bedroom - That Night SCENE 4 "The Incident by the Lake" The Lake - The Following Afternoon 3. WHO NEEDS THE WORDS? The Company SCENE 5 "Bancroft Has a Nightmare" Walpurgisdorf Jail - Same Time 4. LULLABY Frau Gessler SCENE 6 "The Plot Thickens" Walpurgisdorf Forest The Following Afternoon 5. EVERY WALPURGISDORFER KNOWS Martin, Kitty! The Company SCENE 7 "Metamorphosis" Walpurgisdorf Castle - Later That Night 6. LOOK YOUR BEST Bancroft, Mrs Bancroft |
ACT TWO
SCENE 1 "A Guide Appears" Walpurgisdorf Mountain - Later that Night 7. POLICEMEN AND SCIENTISTS Duo, Steiner, Bancroft, D'Arcy, Mrs Bancroft SCENE 2 "A Close Shave" A Cave - Same Time 8. I LIKE A LOT OF FRIENDS Kitty SCENE 3 "A Strange Homecoming" Walpurgisdorf Castle - A Little Later 9. THE MOON IS FULL Ingeborg, The Company SCENE 4 " The Final Clue" Walpurgisdorf Church - Same Time SCENE 5 "A Lethal Cocktail" Steiner's Laboratory - Same Time 10. WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SOME FUN (Reprise) Steiner, Ingeborg SCENE 6 "We're On Our Way" Walpurgisdorf Ski-Run - Same Time SCENE 7 "A Ghastly Plan" Steiner's Laboratory - Same Time SCENE 8 "A Serious Delay" A Road - Same Time SCENE 9 "The Plan Works" Steiner's Laboratory - Same Time SCENE 10 " Will They Make It?" Another Road - Same Time SCENE 11 "Gotterdaemmerung" Steiner's Laboratory - Same Time SCENE 12 "One Last Surprise" Walpurgisdorf Castle The Following Morning 11. WHO NEEDS THE WORDS? (Reprise) The Company |
Review
The Stage: Maureen Paton
Author/Director Ken Hill's latest venture into Comic Gothic is billed as a monster musical, but in truth, the monster hardly needs the music. Ian Armit and Carl Zeller’s unremarkable compositions simply slow down the action of this resourceful horror pastiche, the fluency of which could be improved by losing half an hour from its running time. Hill cannot resist ambitiously packing a wide variety of influences into the show.
Yet there is much to relish in the knowing jokes, as Hill unfolds a story of rampant lycanthropy in the Walpurgis Forest of 1922, when a family of dim English toffs are rescued from wolfish Germans by Robin Nedwell’s likeable milord, somewhat improbably disguised as their smoothie-chops butler. There is, in Sarah-Jane McClelland's multi-purpose set design – which neatly combines castle battlements, a spiral staircase, brooding mountains and a killer swamp – all that Gothic business could desire. The same goes of Terrence Hardiman's Boris Karloff look, as the deranged psychoanalyst Professor Steiner, who is ably abetted by Toni Palmer’s sinister psychiatric nurse.
The piece is played absolutely straight, descending into broader realms of pantomime only when the werewolf finally appears and runs through the auditorium with his prey. Diana Morrison suffers daintily as the virginal heroine Kitty, and there is good work from Stephen Pacey as her baronial swain, Tyler Butterworth, in three contrasting roles and Bogdan Kominowski as a German chief of police who seems on loan from ‘Allo ‘Allo. Judith Bruce and Reginald Marsh complete a sprightly cast as Kitty’s bemused mama and papa .
* *
* * *
Review
The Times: Benedict Nightingale
MOCK HORROR ROMP
A werewolf stalks the Theatre Royal, Stratford East
Review
The Times: Benedict Nightingale
MOCK HORROR ROMP
A werewolf stalks the Theatre Royal, Stratford East
Why would an eminent physician, his pushy wife, their beautiful daughter and a love-lorn lord disguised as their butler choose to take a vacation in an asylum based in Walpurgisdorl Castle and specialising in the treatment of lycanthropy? Why would they press on cheerfully to this destination even when a passing woodcutter, asked how to get there, crosses himself with a hideous groan? For us theatre buffs, there is only one answer. They are about to take part in another jaunty horror- show by Ken Hill.
Hill is the adaptor of The Phantom of the Opera (the pre-Lloyd Webber version) and The Invisible Man. Like them, Curse of the Werewolf straddles the no man's land between Grand Guignol and the kind of romp in which the Theatre Royal has specialised since the days of Joan Littlewood. It is pretty silly stuff - petty guignol, so to speak - but it does not pretend to be anything else. Sarah-Jane McClelland's set looks a bit neat and clean for a spooky pile, but it is an imposing sight, and an adaptable one too. Moreover, it comes with all the trimmings: organ music, loud wind, metallic shrieks, scudding clouds, creaks, unexplained stage smoke, and so little daylight as to make the place meteorologically interesting.
Hill's production is somewhat pacier and more restless than the moon, which contrives to remain full and unmoving whatever the time of the night or the month. However, some of the acting needs gingering up and some of lan Armit and Carl Zeller's bright, winsome but distracting songs need gingering down. That would have the double effect of speeding the flow of the story of Kitty (Diana Morrison), the English belle who comes to Walpurgisdorf with what appears to be an unswerving determination to be terrorised, manhandled and abused. Actually, Morrison remains almost pathologically unruffled throughout her ordeal. This includes, but does not fully comprise, being carried off by the aristocratic werewolf (Steven Pacey) with whose pink, hairless alter ego she has fallen in love, and being forced to mainline on lupine narcotics by a megalomaniac doctor who, as played by Terrence Hardiman, looks like a bleached, balding blend of Peter Cushing and Vita Sackville-West. A leather-clad police chief (Bogdan Kominowski) with a mechanical arm hovers menacingly on the sidelines, but turns out to be there mainly for decorative purposes. The decoration also includes corpses, a severed hand, fingers creeping round corners, and a really rather effective piece of transformation involving Pacey and some grey fur.
All this, and a lot of pastiche B-movie lines. "We are on the edge of a swamp, and many an unwary traveller has been lost in it," someone tells Morrison's dimpling Kitty as hungry gurgles and paludal tummy-rumbles rise from a grotto nearby - and do you need me to tell you what duly occurs? Of course you don't, not when Ken Hill is happily Ken Hilling.