The Gothic Tales of Edith Nesbit
Haunted Shadows – The Gothic Tales of Edith Nesbit – is three ghost stories: A Strange Experience, The Pavilion and The Shadow.
“Haunted Shadows presents audiences with a chilling selection of Edith Nesbit’s best short stories, together with some creepy autobiographical reminiscences of her own,” said Jonathan Rigby, who directs the play. “The ingredients range from a formless entity that manifests itself in a brand-new house, a bloodsucking presence residing in a 16th-century pavilion, and a deranged young woman kept in seclusion by her elder sisters. Add to these a battalion of desiccated mummies in a Bordeaux crypt and a powerhouse performance by Claire Louise Amias, and you have a uniquely effective one-woman show.”
The League of Gentleman actor Mark Gatiss said “Claire Louise Amias takes us into the dark heart of the legendary writer’s ghost stories – unexpected, wonderfully weird and with a very particular Edwardian atmosphere.”
Edith Nesbit’s prolific career included horror stories such as The Haunted Inheritance and Man-Size in Marble, poems including A Kentish Garden, The Kiss and Appeal and more than 60 children’s titles such as The Railway Children, The Story of the Treasure Seekers and Five Children And It. Noel Coward remarked that the London-born author “had an economy of phrase, and an unparalleled talent for evoking hot summer days in the English countryside.”
Haunted Shadows – The Gothic Tales of Edith Nesbit takes place at Greenwich Theatre at 7.30pm on October 31. The play also heads to Jermyn Street Theatre at 5.00pm on November 2. More details are at amonkeywithcymbals.co.uk
