Director Sophia Orr directly references 80s fashion and music throughout in this portrayal of 19th-century writersChristopher Lorde with permission for Varsity

As 80s pop songs melded into a recording of Margaret Thatcher, with coloured lighting flickering over the lone figure of Percy Shelley (Rob Monteiro) in a black velvet waistcoat, raging against the hypocrisy of British institutions, it was clear that this production of Bloody Poetry was not going to be a conventional depiction of its subjects. Howard Brenton’s 1984 play may have taken inspiration from the fraught times in which it was written, but here director Sophia Orr directly references 80s fashion and music throughout in this portrayal of 19th-century writers Shelley (here called ‘Bysshe’), Lord Byron (Eddie Adams), Mary Shelley (Irisa Kwok) and her stepsister Claire Clairmont (Emily Shelley) as they experiment with a new morality and denounce unjust political systems on the shores of Lake Geneva.

I’ll start with the unique aesthetic, one of the show’s most compelling features. The deployment of fierce pop anthems over scene transitions helped emphasise the urgency and heightened emotions of characters who could easily have come across as self-absorbed and isolated from the rest of the world. Instead, there was a frenzied, anxious energy driving the production onwards. This evolving sense of dread was aided by the dim lighting (from Li Xuan Ho) which evoked Gothic horror scenes and created intensity through bold colour choices. Inventive use was also made of the auditorium lights towards the play’s end, as the storytelling starts to fragment and characters walk in and amongst the audience. Toni Renz’s sound design was also imaginative, deploying a jarringly modern ‘alarm’ noise to emphasise certain moments of terror, although at times this overpowered the actors’ voices.

“I was particularly impressed by how well-choreographed the group scenes were”

Special mention should also be given to the costuming team (Helen Lyster and Julia Slawska) – with the stage being mostly bare throughout, costumes effectively provided the setting, confidently blending the period drama aesthetic with modern touches. This created gorgeous, distinct visual identities for all the onstage personalities, from Mary’s angular Gothic outfit, highlighted in reds and blacks, to Byron’s brooding leather jacket.

The first half imagines the conversations that occurred during the summer where the four artists met – accompanied by Byron’s biographer Polidori (Senan McSweeney-Davis), who is never accepted as one of the group. Sheltered from a storm, excited by one another’s imaginations, they philosophise on the meaning of art whilst ignoring the responsibilities that conventional morality would place upon them – like marriage, or fatherhood. The second half covers the following years, when all four suffer a series of tragedies. Polidori takes on the role of a narrator or knowing commentator, and they are all joined onstage by a mysterious sixth character (Kaitlin Pryce), whose story I won’t spoil…

“If there’s an overall flaw with this play, it’s that there’s too much going on”

This is a dense, challenging, wordy story that requires the audience to rapidly parse a lot of information about many complex relationships. That I found things less confusing than they could have been is to the credit of the director and cast. I was particularly impressed by how well-choreographed the group scenes were, with everyone making excellent use of space and body language to create memorable tableaux. Adams stood out as the most engaging onstage presence, making Byron both arrogant and likeable. His conversational rhythms were entertainingly off-balance, flipping between passionate and insincere. I also enjoyed McSweeney-Davis’s cynical counterbalance to the poets’ melodrama. Initially a flustered man completely out of sync with the artists who taunt him, Polidori transitions into a far more sinister and confident figure by the second half, talking directly to future audiences similar to Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar.

However, there were issues the production was not always able to fix. The first half is the most intense and atmospheric, but I didn’t feel particularly invested in any of the characters by the time the interval arrived. This is somewhat remedied in the second act though, as we finally see the characters reflect critically on their younger selves. Theoretically, the play offers a tangled web of emotions and relationships, but it’s hard to care about who has betrayed whom when everyone seems so selfish anyway – the stakes just aren’t that high. The dynamic between Bysshe and Mary suffered particularly from a lack of strong foundation. Despite strong individual characterisations, the fighting between them gets a little repetitive, in arguments where her strength of conviction, bordering on contempt, is pitted against his weakness and naivety. I would have been interested to see more variation and even tenderness prior to the complete breakdown of their relationship.


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If there’s an overall flaw with this play, it’s that there’s too much going on. There are so many words and ideas being thrown at the audience – theories about poetry and art and politics – that it’s hard to feel as if we’ve gotten to know any of these figures besides Bysshe – and even he only gets a superficial nod towards a life outside of these relationships. When Monteiro finally recites The Masque of Anarchy, the clarity and accessibility of the poem feel like a welcome relief – “As I lay asleep in Italy, there came a voice from over the Sea”. Earlier, Mary says that the best poetry is good because “it sings”. After hours of talking about poetry, this play sings the most when it lets its characters’ famous works speak for themselves.

‘Bloody Poetry’ is showing at the ADC Theatre from Tuesday 28 January until Saturday 2 February, at 7:45pm.

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