The horrors she witnessed have awakened vague, equally traumatising memories of an earlier time when, as an orphaned child she was sent to stay with an elderly half blind aunt, Miss Furnival on the Northumberland moors, and she’s now returned to the house with a medium (Debbie Chazen) to try and piece together what happened, using exorcism rather in the way of therapy.
Justin Audibert’s production is suitably eerie. Doors bang, lights go out, a lonely owl screeches in the distance. A music box suddenly starts playing in the corner of a dusty room; there is a terrific sleight of hand involving a knitted doll.
Yet Torday’s slow-burning script, which features just two actors, works with almost perverse deliberation against itself. The switches back and forth in time constantly disrupt the tension and accumulating unease. The World War I framework feels like an arbitrary context.
He’s predominantly interested in ideas of immigration and racism – fair enough; after all, Gaskell dismissively describes the feckless musician at the heart of her story as “foreign”. Yet he gets so bogged down making his fleshed out story hang on the bones of Gaskell’s, the actual nightmare at its heart is almost entirely lost.
Moreover Audibert’s production can’t decide if its a thriller or a comedy. You feel for Chazen, who has to keep switching between three different old women. All the same there is something of Macbeth’s porter about her medium Estelle, her purpose seemingly to provide some clumsy light relief, while her tottering Miss Furnival is downright hammy, her lower mouth hanging open like some absurd Hieronymus Bosch caricature. Disappointing.
The Child in the Snow is at Wilton’s Music Hall until December 31. Tickets: 020 77022789; wiltons.org.uk
