This is the third beguiling story by the excellent Moon Rabbit Theatre, now based in Edinburgh, which comprises writer Josh King and performer Jasmin Gleeson. Specialising in one-woman historical plays, previous work has included The Poetical Life of Philomena McGuinness and Victorine.
Shirley examines the reasons why people write ghost stories, and Gleeson relishes the role, delivering something uncanny, strange, and repressed here with aplomb. She flits easily through a range of characters and accents while spinning this haunting yarn at breakneck speed; the 50 minutes pass more like 20. This hot room in August only works to ramp up the unsettling atmosphere that relies only on excellent and fabled story telling which has been this company’s tradition.
Gleeson and King have an imaginative way of summoning how a sense of injustice and confinement can deeply impact a life. King has based the play loosely on the life of American gothic writer Shirley Jackson and the ghost stories of English toff M.R. James. He amplifies many of the values and the style of their work to bring bigger societal issues to the fore, while the flicker of something sinister and the supernatural is ever-present. The play is creepy and dark, without being frightening, much like the work of Jackson and James.
Shirley is another stand-out at this year’s festival, while the explicit and extreme is often served up at The Fringe, Moon Rabbit has gone in a more subtle direction with quality writing, storytelling, and performance. This completes a trilogy of excellence.
PHOTO Richard Purden
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