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Natalie Burns reviews Ernest and the Pale Moon, running at the Bristol Old Vic theatre until April 10

If you’re a fan of the dark, the sinister, and the frankly quite melodramatic, then Ernest and the Pale Moon is a performance you’ll thoroughly enjoy. Drawing on gothic tales you’ll no doubt recognise, the play has the feeling of deliberately uneasy familiarity, and etches a beautifully nightmarish portrait of woeful horror.

The content of the story is nothing new – the gothic horror staples of isolation, longing, a beautiful pale lady watched from a distance. These are overarched by the complications of Ernest’s decent into madness, and of course, an oppressive and overbearing absent mother figure. Writer Oliver Lansley makes blatant and deliberate reference to many well established tales by Edgar Allen Poe and Henry James, as well as Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Psycho, interweaving them into a story which is as entertaining and macabre as it is familiar.

The story depicts poor Ernest watching a beautiful pale lady through her apartment window in an act of what he sees as love, but is in fact dangerous obsession. All the while, Ernest’s longing is presided over by the watchful eye of a painting of his absent mother. As Ernest’s obsession grows and drives him slowly more insane, the horror and disquiet culminate in a terrible discovery that will satisfy any fan of the gothic.

The staging of the performance plays cleverly with perception and imagination, and the intense peculiar lighting has a Hammer Horror quality that would make any Poe fan proud. The small Old Vic stage provides a suitably claustrophobic setting, and the four actors are unsettlingly gaunt, ghostly and interchangeable.

Although the story is familiar, and the climax inevitable, the play is thoroughly enjoyable, well acted, and well staged. It’s a real guilty pleasure – like the late night sixties horror films you watch even though you know you’ve got work in the morning and should be tucked up in bed.

Over the top, deliberately over acted, and with a stage setting brilliantly exaggerating every horrible twist and turn. If you love horror, you’ll love Ernest and the Pale Moon.

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