Park Theatre – until Saturday 28 October 2023
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Sibling rivalry and silly spooky shenanigans are a real Halloween treat in this energetic and atmospheric new comedy from Make It Beautiful Theatre Company.
After their father’s death Jack (Felix Grainger), Sarah (Cara Steele) and Connor (Gabriel Fogarty-Graveson) struggle to keep his pub running. Sarah (an entrepreneur with disastrously unfeasible ideas) and Connor (drifting from one mate’s sofa to another) return for the funeral and blame reliable Jack (the only one who stayed in town and visited their father in the care home) for the sorry state of business at The Nag’s Head. Behind her brother’s back, Sarah accepts a deal with an old uni friend who works for Greene King and tries to boost business so that they can get more money when they sell to that ubiquitous chain.
Sarah struggles to find The Nag’s Head’s USP, until she encounters Dr G Host and decides to market The Nag’s Head as the most haunted pub in Shireshire, helped by a front-page story about a mysterious painting that their father left them. Also thrown in are some ghostly romance, demonic possession, the cult of the Greene King, warnings from apparitions in the beer cellar and lessons about animal poo. Is this mysterious painting a tool of the devil or is it the family’s inability to deal openly with their grief that leads to the spiralling madness that leads to chaotic and explosive situations?
The bond between the siblings is portrayed beautifully – no matter the insults, apathy (no one remembers the name of Jack’s girlfriend of 15 years!) and jealously, the unbreakable love and affection always shines through in writers Grainger and Fogarty-Graveson’s script. The running jokes bed in well and the physical comedy from the cast is as strong as the dialogue. Steele embodies every horror film’s cliché portrayal of possession as Sarah becomes obsessed with consistency in a fantastically dynamic performance. Fogarty-Graveson is sweetly ridiculous as the snarky and hapless Connor he acts out his dates with the mysterious Mary, and hilarious as the insane characters who visit the pub. Grainger is madly OTT as Dr Host, and a bundle of frustration as Jack.
The simple yet effective set evokes the sticky floors and mismatched furniture of rundown village pubs, and Beril Yavuz’s lighting ramps up the tension and frames the scares brilliantly. Alice Chambers directs skilfully, allowing the humour, scares and pathos to mix seamlessly.
The Nag’s Head is a story of grief, sibling love and the nonsensical systems we develop to heal rifts, interweaved with paranormal phenomena and bonkers comedy – what’s not to like?