In a terrifying episode of the television series Six Feet Under, David, the show’s moral compass and sole redeeming character (played by the brilliant Michael C Hall), picks up the hitch-hiker his parents should have warned him about. At first seemingly benign, the hitcher quite literally hijacks the episode, forcing the audience to stay and endure with David, as he is mocked and brutalised by his increasingly deranged tormentor. It is difficult stuff to watch, and the show’s core audience deserted it in droves.
There is something similarly unsettling about Greg Wohead’s solo performance in The Ted Bundy Project. Based around the confession tapes of convicted serial killer Ted Bundy, Wohead toys with his audience in a perversely skittish fashion. Here, the Devil is most definitely in the attention to detail. Snugly fitted out in vintage tennis whites, he is every inch the Suburban Mr Jones, flirty dancing along to Middle of the Road songs, and goo-goo eyeing the audience. Rather like Bundy – who between 1974 and 1978 murdered at least 30 young women – Wohead is dangerously plausible, a “nice guy.” Pay attention, for it is a sleight of hand.
A Texan based in London, Wohead chanced upon Bundy’s confession tapes online late one night in November 2012. He couldn’t stop listening, and the more he listened the more it tapped into his residual memories of growing up in the United States. The Ted Bundy Project is a dark work of the imagination, an exploration into the modern fascination with serial killers which picks away at the scab where revulsion turns into morbid curiosity. Wohead says people usually pull an expression of mock-horror when he tells them he is working on a piece about Ted Bundy.
And then they ask about “the juicy stuff.”
“Don’t worry,” he intones. “We’ll get to the juicy stuff!”
Alice Hoult’s plywood staging gives the production an added frisson of sinister banality. There is a nod to Lars Von Trier as Wohead fashions a crime-scene out of a penknife, a roll of black tape and an assortment of props pulled from a seventies vinyl holdall. Slipping a cassette tape into an old Walkman he is suddenly possessed, his voice transfigured into Bundy’s monotone, stop-start drawl. The change is so unexpected, so startling, it is as though we have jumped channels, zapping away in some late night sanctum.
More menacing is Bundy’s panty hose mask which Wohead leaves to hang from a rope until it is eventually called upon for an unflinching, excruciating moment of audience participation. It is a neatly worked trick. Participation is one small step away from being complicit. The Ted Bundy Project conflates the stock mythology of Bundy’s crimes with the memory of a summer camp encounter and the dark-web subculture of reaction videos (selfies by sick people). It is clever the way it sneaks up. Nor does Wohead fail to deliver on his promise of “the juicy stuff” – but it comes at a price, and whether the audience thanks him for it is another matter entirely.
Part-lecture, part twisted cabaret, part-confessional, The Ted Bundy Project is a compelling, rather grubby experience – and is all the better for it. Wohead brilliantly holds the audience up a mirror, rooting around inside its subconscious. Look, he seems to be saying, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Ted Bundy. He was “a nice guy” – and that is truly the most terrifying thing you could say about any of us.
Greg Wohead’s The Ted Bundy Project is at The Bristol Old Vic until Saturday 27th June 2015
Neil Mudd on Twitter : @veryblankindeed