An evening of fearsome folklore reviewed by Katie Beswick (@ElfinKate), this storytelling performance by Matthew Bellwood is on tonight (2nd November ) at The Carrigeworks, at 7.45pm
The Unquiet Dead, The Carriageworks, Leeds 1st and 2nd November 2012
I’m well into this reviewing thing now, having completed (as I write these words) some seven reviews for this beauteous blog. I’m so much into my reviewing role that I agreed this week to review something without asking what it was I was going to review. I just turned up at The Carriageworks at half past seven as instructed and waited patiently for Phil (@philkirby, Culture Vulture editor) to appear with the tickets, like the whole thing was some kind of backwards blind date. And it felt a bit like that – as I was unable to anticipate the event, I got the same kind of nervous as I might were I meeting a potential cad to indulge in a romantic liaison with. Would it be my sort of thing? What if it involved hours and hours of Shakespeare in Elizabethan dress? What if it was a total disaster which I would be forced to slag off in writing?
The event I was sent to review turned out to be The Unquiet Dead, an evening of scary stories told by Leeds based writer and storyteller Matthew Bellwood. This was seasonal, what with November 1st being still, sort of, Halloween, and I was pleasantly surprised; I love being told a good old tale (except when the tale is told by an unfaithful lover attempting to deceive me). My most favourite childhood memories involve selecting a book from the big wooden book shelf in my parents’ hallway and snuggling in a warm bed while my mother read me a story; her Essex tones soothing me into dreamless sleep.
I didn’t fall asleep during The Unquiet Dead, but I was enraptured by the stories in a way not dissimilar to the enrapture I experienced when my mother read my favourite Alfie series to me as a baby-child. Matthew has the kind of awesome stage presence and charisma that make me envious. And the stories were expertly selected – literally: Matthew does storytelling for a living (I know, I wasn’t aware that was a legitimate career either). My favourite was the The Shadow, an Edith Nesbit tale which used the horror story form as a metaphor for the dark and destructive effects of romantic resentment, although, more lastingly chilling was a story called The New Mother, by Lucy Clifford. Not only was the glass eyed, wooden tailed New Mother who replaced the loving mumma of some inexpertly naughty children one of the more horrifying characters my subconscious has absorbed for some years, but the mantra repeated throughout the story – ‘it requires a great deal of skill to be naughty well’ – provided me with a witty truism which may prove useful should I one day birth children of my own.
I also loved the simple setting, a carved wooden armchair with slightly mouldering upholstery, a standard lamp and a faux Persian rug hinted at the kind of stately home gothic horror that was the atmosphere of the stories. Even the chilled air of The Carriageworks studio space added to the gothic ambience of the performance. It was an entirely enjoyable evening. Although if I have one criticism, it’s this: Matthew, one should not wear a red and white cardigan over a black polyester shirt, especially when one is on stage being watched by stylish people. Just FYI.