Revenant: review

According to Wikipedia, a revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. If you know your mythical creatures, then the very title of this one-man play is a spoiler. “Revanant” begins full of promise – a lone actor plays a struggling filmmaker hellbent on creating his magnum opus. When I say a lone actor, I mean lone: this is a one man show. The set is gorgeous – a desolate, torn up room with a sole table and chair for the actor to sit on – and the New Theatre is a really beautiful, intimate theatre that invites an intense theatrical experience. Simon Toal does a great job of creating several characters for the audience- his accent range, facial expressions and body language change entirely for each character. This extraordinarily difficult performance demands physicality and ability, which Toal has in spades. At one point in the play, the director mentions that an actor has “it”. He isn’t sure what “it” is, but he knows it when he sees it. If this is true, then even to the most amateur of theatre critics, Toal has it in spades. He delivers the story through about fifteen different characters, which is certainly an interesting way to perform a drama.  Toal certainly delivers in terms of talent, charisma and ability - it’s just a shame about the messy, lazy script.

As I said, it all starts promisingly enough. The script is witty and tight – we get hints of the mystery surrounding Vardell, the director’s star actor, but it’s not given away to begin with. However, the script goes rapidly downhill when we start to hear of strange disappearances. Toying with the supernatural in media, cinema or literature is never an easy task. We’ve all read “Dracula” and seen “Night of the Living Dead” in several incarnations over the years. The classic formula is tired by now – we’ve seen it reinvented over and over in the past few years. Loathe as I am to mention (much less praise) the “T” word, at least it tries something new with the supernatural being formula. “Revenant” is stuck in the dark ages and when the plot’s twist arrives, it’s the least surprising thing ever. I tried to enjoy the comic horror elements, but the clichés came too thick and too fast for me to grab onto anything concrete.

The message of “Revanant” seems to be the high price of fame, but after scenes of gore, terror and shouting, any sort of socio-political message gets lost in translation. The first half of the play is a lot of fun – funny and occasionally clever. But it’s dragged down by a script that’s outdated and dull, leaving the audience wondering if they’ve missed the point of “Revanant” or if it really was that silly.

4/10