The Pit, Barbican Centre

Halloween (otherwise known as gay Christmas) is an odd festival. Originally Samhain, celebrating “when summer goes to rest”, licked by the fire of the witch trials and now co-opted by the capitalist devils, wrapping everything in plastic and pumpkin-themed tat.  Is the aim to be titillated, terrified, or thoughtful about the fleetingness of existence?

On the surface, this year’s Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award winner Finn Beames’s Quiet Songs is pointedly on theme. We have Irish starlet Ruth Negga, returning to the London stage for the first time since 2011. Flying over from her LA home to pace around The Pit space in a schoolboy’s uniform looking like a Tim Burton character. Spooky check 1.

Then there are the swords, and I really do mean plural, swords. Suspended from the ceiling slowly swinging or used as string instruments by Fra Rustumji (violin), Chihiro Ono (viola), Hoda Jahanpour (cello), and Thea Sayer (double bass), also in school uniforms. The most goth chandelier, spooky check 2.

But at the heart of this multi-genre production is horror yes, but in the way that real life excels at without even trying. Negga’s voice is like crushed leaves under foot on a cold day, giving life to Beames’s semi-autobiographical tale of growing up queer within the British school system. As someone who has felt the sting of this firsthand, the script navigates the barbarity of teenage boys and the internal struggle of the outsider impeccably. “Tomorrow is a bad day” is repeated by Negga’s character known simply as BOY, curled up on the small raised stage demarking a bed, a position many of us can remember all too well.

Weapons at hand the majority of the soundtrack is the scraping of blades or the staccato of Beames’s string compositions. Bethany Gupwell’s lighting is all hard-edged starkness, with a radiating use of piled lamps to give appropriate warmth to the final crescendo.

A razor edge script, a Hollywood actor, and the Barbican’s expert creatives on hand, 10’s across the board surely? Yet some of the ideas explored need some fine-tuning. The sabers-strings although visually arresting prove a little quiet for us at the back of the auditorium, although using a large medieval Zweihänder (greatsword) periodically submersed in water solves this problem. Negga has the vocal crackle for the story but stumbles multiple times over the exhaustive monologue, pulling us out of the current. Overall clumsy transitions in darkness and stop/start pacing distract from the magical moments. Yet these small niggles are easily sewn up, for ultimately what is here is a thoughtful exploration of the hardest period of some of our lives, the quest to armour oneself against the jabbing daggers of a predatory world. Is that scary enough for you?

There is still time, get the last tickets click here!