It’s now 11 years since Richard Spaul – in situ:’s Artistic Director – began his series of solo performances in the haunting setting of Cambridge’s medieval Leper Chapel.
Ghost Stories III is the latest in the series. Passages from the oldest ghost story in Western literature – The Dead from Homer’s epic The Odyssey – provide the setting for two more modern stories – The Signal Man by Charles Dickens (1866) and Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen (1941). In this way, the tales present the ancient alongside the relatively modern.
And, as I discover when I attend the performance, the tales also focus on an age-old theme. That of internal conflict. Inner struggle. The universal human experience of feeling ‘torn’.
I settle into my seat in the darkening atmosphere of the Leper Chapel, and am immediately transfixed as Richard’s voice dips and rises, levels and then soars again in the first extract from The Dead.
The text is ancient, the words – newly translated by Richard himself – tell the story of Odysseus and his men setting sail to Hades to seek a prophecy from the ghost of the blind prophet Teiresias.
Understandably, the warriors are torn between wanting to know the future and fearing their visit to the Underworld. Already, the audience and I are entertained, but also unsettled by the tale.
The focus shifts. In Demon Lover we are taken to World War II London, where a woman who promised she would wait for her soldier fiance, but married another when her betrothed was reported killed, is horrified by his seeming return from the dead.
Through Richard’s narrative, we both witness and identify with the woman’s inner struggles as she in turn fears vengeance, hopes for forgiveness, denies any danger, yet is terrified that the past has caught up with her. As the tale concludes with her endless screams, I am not the only audience member who shifts uncomfortably in their seat.
A moment only to take breath and then Richard’s eerie vocalisations once more recount how Odysseus’s men face the ghostly figures of the Underworld, with the inner conflict here being the pull between courage and terror. And I myself am starting to feel a shiver. I am safe. I know I am safe, here in Cambridge in 2024. Yet I nevertheless feel torn between fascination and anxiety as I listen to these stories of the supernatural.
There follows a further story of emotional struggle in Dickens’s The Signal Man. The
title character wants to do what he knows is right, yet is aware that by doing so he could create tragedy. Richard guides us through to a chilling climax where the signal man howls his powerlessness, his utter inability to resolve his inner conflict. The story’s denouement reveals that there is in fact a resolution. But it is one which fills us with horror.
And so to the final episode from The Dead, where all the ghosts emerge from the Underworld in a frightful surge. Overwhelmed, Odysseus’s men reconcile their courage-terror by fleeing headlong to their boat and making their escape.
As the show ends, the audience and I have no desire to make our own escape. We all applaud long and loud. One or two of us whoop with delight. We stay to talk, to celebrate the play, to gather round Richard and say how much we loved his work.
But nevertheless, we are thoughtful as we leave for home. We have not only been entertained by classic spooky tales. We have also been reminded by those tales, and by our own reactions through the performance, that inner conflict is a normal, natural and central human experience.
Such conflict does not need to end in horror, as it does for Odysseus and his crew, for the war-time wife, for the Signal Man. Inner conflict can be reconciled, can end in inner peace, can help us grow and develop in strength and maturity. Being torn does not mean being broken.
But ‘torn’ does need to be acknowledged, admitted, accepted. We shouldn’t ignore this central fact of human experience. We need to face it full on.
By exploring inner conflict in this most compelling of ways, Richard Spaul’s Ghost Stories III helps us do just that.
Susan says: I am currently heading a research project developing knowledge, insights and resources around the topic of inner conflict. If you would like to contribute your personal experiences of ‘feeling torn’, or have expertise in any field which explore the topics – perhaps artisti, psychological, philosohpical or scientific – I’d the thrilled to hear from you. All contributions can be anonymous and confidential – or attributed if that’s what your prefer. Please fill in the contact form on our current placeholder page https://www.thetornproject.com and we’ll get back to you.
