Edith Nesbit was the author of many enduringly popular children’s stories including The Railway Children, The Treasure Seekers and Five Children and It. She was born in Kennington in 1858 and nearly 175 years later the theatre company A Monkey with Cymbals presents Haunted Shadows, an anthology of Nesbit’s less well-known work – stories of the supernatural – set lightly within an autobiographical framework.
In Haunted Shadows, Nesbit is played by Claire Louise Amias, previously seen at the White Bear in her superb one-woman show The Masks of Aphra Behn. The play comprises three stories, two of which have been adapted by Amias and which she narrates with the help of some appropriately spooky props.
First up is ‘The Shadow’, a deliciously creepy little piece which, barring muffled music and some weak sound effects, gets the evening off to an atmospheric and suitably chilling start. This is followed by the bizarre eco-horror of ‘The Pavilion’, perhaps the most familiar of the three stories and adapted here by the horror expert, author and actor Jonathan Rigby who is also the director of Haunted Shadows.
The final tale, accounting for most of the second half of the evening, is ‘A Strange Experience’ written by Nesbit with her husband Hubert Bland, and one of the author’s earliest published short stories. Amias is at her best in this gothic tale of the dead-alive as, complemented by Steve Lowe’s excellent lighting design, she prowls shadowy corridors and rooms, carefully leading her audience through to an unexpected and suitably horrific conclusion.
While the master of ghost story evenings is surely Robert Lloyd Parry, whose shows highlight MR James and other male writers of ‘spook stories’, with the thrilling Haunted Shadows, the engaging Claire Louise Amias has taped a rich new vein and makes a convincing case for Edith Nesbit as the female master of the genre. Highly recommended.
Review by Louis Mazzini
Edith Nesbit revisits the darkness of her own past, recalling childhood terrors and telling three of her Gothic tales. Better known for her children’s books, she was also a prolific writer of ghost and horror stories. The Shadow, The Pavilion and a rediscovered tale, A Strange Experience, are dramatised in this chilling one-woman show.
Performed by Claire Louise Amias
Directed by Jonathan Rigby
A Monkey with Cymbals presents
HAUNTED SHADOWS: THE GOTHIC TALES OF EDITH NESBIT
28 January to 8 February 2025
White Bear Theatre, 138 Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4DJ
