Flames
Waterloo East Theatre
14 May 2015
3 Stars
A graveyard with a few dilapidated tombstones askew; a few bare shrubs; the scatter and scutter of dead leaves; and the steady drip and putter of winter rain set-in for the day all provide the atmospheric back-drop for FLAMES, the latest work of Stephen Dolginoff, now showing under the railway arch of the Waterloo East Theatre. Dolginoff is best known for Thrill Me, his fine 2005 musical take on the Leopold & Loeb case which previously inspired movies such as Rope and Compulsion. However, a massive thunder-clap and pealing octaves on a piano, more honky-tonk than Steinway, signal from the outset that we are journeying to Highgate Cemetery, London instead of Hyde Park, Chicago and towards a world of direct graveyard thrills rather than the quest for Nietzsche’s Superman and the perfect murder.
A couple emerge from the shadows to pay their respects at a grave centre-stage. Meredith (Abi Finley) is grieving the loss of her fiancé, Edmund, who died in a fire exactly one year ago. She is accompanied by Edmund’s best friend and close work colleague, Eric, (David O’Mahony), who seeks to reassure her in an insinuating opening number that it is now time to move on and that maybe they should confirm their connection and date each other. However, the circumstances of the fire and Edmund’s death continue to trouble her and provide the motor for all the twists and turns that develop in the rest of the evening. As Eric returns to their car another man then appears ((Bradley Clarkson) who claims to be Edmund returned from a grave he never in fact entered. He presents a very different version of events in which he escaped the fire in which he is alleged to have perished. He wants to return to clear his name of the savings fraud of which he stood accused at the time of his death, pick up life where he left off, and confront his alleged murderer. This plot development establishes the dominant theme and source of tension within the musical, namely, ‘Which character, if any is telling the truth, and which if any of them, should we in fact believe?’ Should Meredith believe this account, and are in fact any of the characters who they say they are?
It is therefore in the relationships, rather than in the crimes, that the thrills are meant to reside. This is reflected in the balance between dialogue, music and action. The cemetery setting is mainly decorative: rhetorical puffs of liquid oxygen and extended thunderclaps (with the odd additional contribution of a train passing overhead) punctuate every next plot twist but do not chill the marrow. Instead the focus is on the debates between the characters to convince each other and us of their guilt or innocence. Much of the music takes the form of solo songs that morph into elaborately sustained debating duets. This could be quite static in the wrong hands but fluidity of movement is kept going deftly by director Garry Noakes, despite the cluttered set; and without wanting to give too much away, in the final scenes fight director Cristian Valle gets all three players grappling with each other very plausibly.
Given that book, music and lyrics are the work of the same man, they cannot really be judged separately. The first point to make is that this is very sophisticated and skillful work. The dialogue, is pithy, tight and witty but also plausibly naturalistic and affectionate when it needs to be. Dolginoff is adept at setting up the emotional conflicts in a way that makes the transition from words to music entirely natural. The lyrics can be quite verbose and self-consciously clever; but the musical writing can cope with continuous verbal display without tripping over itself, largely because the lyrics are always plot-driven, taking the action forward rather than becalming us in one mood or another for too long. The music is generally propulsive, showcasing the words above all rather than overwhelming them, but with pools of quieter repose to crystallise a point and emphasise an emotional nuance. Throbbing pedal points dominate, with an arioso style floating above in the voice. There are arresting chord sequences and interesting harmonic smudges in the manner of Sondheim that signal changes of mood and floated melodic phrases that capture the emotional and lyrical aspirations of the characters powerfully.
However, there is an uncertainty of tone about the piece as a whole that does not entirely convince. The evening starts as a straight-forward thriller but then seems to change as the plot twists multiply into a knowing send-up of the genre instead. There is nothing wrong with this, but at points, particularly in the rapid-fire, almost farcical later scenes it was not clear which view should predominate, whether one was supposed to empathise or simply laugh at the characters. On the night I visited there was clearly some laughter in the wrong places, and the audience did not know what to make of the emotional tone. If Dolginoff’s previous and best-known work mirrored very well the themes and tropes of Sweeney Todd this thriller belongs ultimately more alongside the Gothic archfulness of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
If so, was this more to do with the performances or the material? I think the answer lies between the two. This is a lesser work than Thrill Me because it simply tries to do too much and is too clever by half, by the time we reach the end. But to succeed in the swift changes of tone it also needs performers to pick up the pace of the dialogue and play it with the rapid-fire deadly seriousness that Noel Coward said was the secret of the best comedy. My sense is that as the run progresses and the players become more confident in the setting and with each other, this will be the case. That said, all three actors sang confidently and expressed both real and fake emotional intensity as the plot demanded. Alongside them Mathew Eglinton does all that is required in picking up the pace, once the music intervenes, and generates spooky, clangorous, doom-laden atmosphere at the keyboard.
