Tricky customers, demons. Difficult to dislodge. Once they set up shop in a house or an apartment, it can be the very devil trying to get rid of them. Demonic infestation is, thankfully, rare but it does feature in two shows currently running in London, both of them adaptations of films, although the similarities end there.
Under the Shadow is based on Iranian writer and director Babak Anvari’s Bafta-winning 2016 film of the same name, a low-budget but effective horror movie set in Tehran.
Shideh (Leila Farzad) wanted to be a doctor and was a brilliant medical student but was thrown out of medical school for her political activities during the Iranian Cultural Revolution. Now it’s 1988 and the height of the Iran-Iraq war. Her doctor husband has been conscripted to serve on the frontline and she is stuck in their apartment with their seven-year-old daughter Dorsa (Erin Jemmotte on the night I attended).
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Under the strict new religious regime, for which Shideh clearly feels nothing but contempt, she has to keep her Jane Fonda exercise video secret and she must put on her headscarf every time she answers the front door. She’s getting more and more stressed. The weird kid staying with the family downstairs has been telling Dorsa ghost stories and inappropriate jokes, Iraqi missiles are raining down on Tehran and the other residents of the apartment block are urging Shideh to take her daughter and flee the city. The neighbours are gradually abandoning the place themselves. Some think the block is being haunted by a djinn, a malevolent supernatural entity. Shideh, of course, is a woman of science and she doesn’t believe all that nonsense — at first.
As a film, Under the Shadow benefits from being able to use several locations but here there is only one set, Shideh’s living room. At 84 minutes, the movie is much shorter than the play, which runs for two hours 15 minutes, with an interval. The additional running time makes the play feel plodding for the first half an hour. A few of the long silences could be trimmed, and some of the wordless domestic activity cut without much being lost.
There was one highly effective jump scare that prompted screams and then relieved laughter but when the same technique was used again, it fell flat. Some of the special effects were fairly basic — especially for anyone who has seen Paranormal Activity in the West End. Also, the film is a little more ambiguous than the play as to whether the djinn is real or a metaphorical manifestation of Shideh’s unhappiness. Nevertheless this is an intriguing and unusual piece of work, adapted by Carmen Nasr and directed by Nadia Latif and with a great performance by Farzad. If it’s not quite an unqualified success, it’s a fascinating near-miss.
One of Babak Anvari’s choices in the most recent Sight and Sound poll to find the Greatest Films of All Time was Tim Burton’s 1998 comedy horror Beetlejuice (it didn’t make the top 250) and that’s the other demonic infestation show currently playing, now transformed into a musical.
Here, a deceased couple try to haunt the new inhabitants of their former home and call for help from a cunning, anarchic bio-exorcist — i.e. an exorcist who cleanses a place of the living. This is a madcap, live-wire demon named Beetlejuice (David Fynn in the musical, Michael Keaton in the film). One of the new inhabitants of the house is a young goth, Lydia (Hannah Nordbeg here, Winona Ryder in the film). She’s still grieving over the death of her mother and can see ghosts. Hilarity ensues.
This musical has been running in America since 2018 and it is a slight, light, perfectly enjoyable evening in the theatre. It’s pretty funny and there were some good jokes about Paddington the Musical, the vacuity of life coaches and James Corden’s penis. The set looks rather cheap but perhaps that’s deliberate and intended to reflect a sort of scrappy, punk aesthetic.
Among the musical numbers are the two Harry Belafonte songs “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jump In The Line (Shake, Señora)” that also feature in the movie. The rest of the songs, music and lyrics, by Australian comedian Eddie Perfect, are fine, although I doubt anyone leaves whistling the melodies.
That said, there were a lot of people in the audience who appeared to know all the songs and were dressed as either Beetlejuice or Lydia. On a couple of occasions, things appeared to be veering dangerously close to audience participation. Personally, I’d rather take my chances with any number of demons than indulge in audience participation but different strokes I guess.
Under the Shadow at the almeida.co.uk runs until 4 July
Beetlejuice at the www.princeedwardtheatre.co.uk runs until 17 April 2027
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