GUEST POST: Pontypool Stage Show Review by Alasdair Stuart

Pontypool is my favourite horror movie. Adapted from Tony Burgess’ cult novel, it follows the crew of a tiny Canadian local radio station on the night that a virus spread through language breaks out in their small town. As they become the story, and the story becomes a killer, the three must work out how to communicate with each other and the world. It’s intensely humane, relentlessly funny and unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.

It's ridiculously appropriate then that a story about a linguistic virus should evolve so well. As well as the excellent original book, there’s an audio drama using the movie’s cast and now, the show has jumped the Atlantic to land in the home of the other Pontypool, Wales.

For the next week, a stage production of Pontypool is playing in the Millennium Centre’s Westin Studio in Cardiff. I saw it last week, chatted to the director and had an incredibly good, fun night.

 This is a show that’s deeply Welsh in fascinating, subtle ways. In addition to relocating the story to the valleys, it also leans into the very real cultural divide between the different elements of the UK and the stories we tell ourselves about where we come from and who we are. No one tgells those stories louder than Grant Mazzy, the exiled shock jock at the heart of the play. Lloyd Hutchinson plays him with Clarksonian glee, revelling in the sound of his own voice and trying not to think about how far it carries. Thrown out of the BBC, Grant is a legend in his own lunchtime, performatively railing against the dying of the light from Beacon Radio’s tiny studio.

His only appreciative audience is Megan Davies, played by Mali O’Donnell. The production assistant for Beacon is intensely competent, cheerful and likes everyone, the social glue that holds Grant and producer Rhiannon Briar played by Victoria John together. O’Donnell and John are both fantastic and there’s a smartly handled dynamic between the two women that does the vital work of grounding the story. We find out as the story goes on that Rhi is guilt-ridden over the fact Megan is at the station. Not because of what she does but because of how small it is and how few opportunities there are. Grant is exiled here, Rhi feels like she’s the sole defender of the station status quo and Megan is quite happy where she is, even if Rhi isn’t. Three people at three different stages of their career, all crammed into a tiny studio on the day the world ends. Elements like that, and the universally strong cast give the play a foundation it only ever builds on. Its characters do the same, clinging to their training, using their job as a shield even as they slowly realise just how much trouble they’re in. John is especially good in this regard playing Rhi as furious, terrified, exhausted and relentless she’s just trying to understand the problem, even as Grant is trying to make the problem his road home.

The problem itself is chillingly well realised, and movement coordinator Lucy Glassbrook has given the virus victims (Referred to as ‘Conversationalists’ in the original text) a chilling set of common movements as the virus overtakes them. Director Dan Phillips uses this as a handle to crank the tension with the second half featuring an extended sequence where the radio staff are locked in with multiple victims. Because the event is so unprecedented, and Grant is often so self-absorbed, we notice before they do and the ‘IT’S BEHIND YOU!’ tension is cut with the horror of watching someone be taken over to create some gloriously dark theatrical horror. Philips and Robinson give us multiple cups too, with Corwyn Jones is particularly impressive as ‘helicopter traffic reporter’ Ken Loney who witnesses the original breakout in a manner that shatters his, his colleagues’ and our illusions that anything is safe.

That’s the big takeaway from the show. Hefin Robinson’s script comes at the original idea from a different angle that makes it both more focused and humane and, if anything, bleaker. Grant’s motivations are an oil and water slick of personal gain and altruism and as the second half continues and order collapses, he rises to the occasion whether anyone wants him to or not. Dan Phillips peppers that act with some glorious moments of theatricality, all of which land like the arcing flashlight blows of one character clubbing another to death on a near blacked out stage. Language, music, implication and psychology all mix in the increased damaged studio and your perception of the characters shifts even as the language they’re using does. The ending, whose final line has been on my tattoo list for years, is subtly retooled too, as Grant both tries to save the world and redeem himself. It’s not the end of the world, it’s not even the end of the show, but it’s the end of Grant Mazzy’s exile and God help anyone in his way.

 Every choice this show makes is smart. Every performance is top notch. The production looks brilliant. It deserves a longer run, a wider audience and a lot of acclaim and if you’re a horror fan and can make it to Cardiff, you need to see it.

Pontypool is currently playing at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff until November 16^th.

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Alasdair Stuart is a professional enthusiast, pop culture analyst, and writer behind the award-nominated weekly newsletter, The Full Lid. He is a multiple Hugo finalist and co-owns the Escape Artists podcast network. He can be found on bluesky.

Microreview [Book/Stage]: The Half-God of Rainfall by Inua Ellams

Unexpected journeys in godhood and sports

The Half-God of Rainfall has been an exercise in the unexpected for me, though perhaps it shouldn't have been. First, I'd been rather dense in picking up that this book, by poet and playwright Inua Ellams, is in fact a story in verse. On that discovery, I had the standard concerns about whether I was really qualified to read this book I'd committed to review, or whether daring to have an opinion on some words that sometimes rhyme is inherently beyond me as a prose reviewer. Then I calmed down and opened it up. Lots of pages later, I get to the last line and think "Cool, now time to review something new and interesting that expands my horizons beyond the world of prose". However! No sooner do I start starting said horizon-expanding review when a google search teaches me that The Half God of Rainfall is not just a poem by a playwright, but a poem that is about to be staged in London. In the spirit of "why broaden one horizon when you can broaden two", what follows is therefore my thoughts not just on The Half-God of Rainfall in its written form, but of the performance that brought it to life in the Kiln Theatre, Kilburn in May 2019.

The Half-God of Rainfall is a story of ancient deities and their impact on the lives of mortals, told through a distinctly modern lens. Its hero is Demi (Kwame Odoom), the child of Zeus and a mortal woman. His mother, Modupe (Rakie Ayola), was given the protection of Osún, the Òrisà of rivers, only to have that protection fail due to a contest between the Òrisà's God of Thunder and Zeus, with a mortal of the winner's choice as a prize. Demi, half-god of rainfall, is born immediately from his mother's rape and grows up knowing both her love and grief, and his own uncontrollable powers. We meet him by the side of a basketball court, barred from play because of his tendency to literally flood the land when he cries, at the moment he turns his ability to "make it rain" from a literal ability into a figurative one and begins his rise to the top of world-class basketball - and attracts the notice of both the Òrisà and the Greek pantheon.

The language of Half-God is gorgeous, full of rhyme and flow that demands to be "voiced", even if you're just talking in your own head on a packed train carriage. On the page, it's subtle and fluid, and the transformation and feeling of "discovery" as each of those rhymes and lyrical moments appears in sound is one that I delighted in. Running through this is an exploration of dialect and narrative mode, from lines of dialogue that feel lifted from classical translations or myth retellings to more modern vernacular, like the exploration of "Nigerian tongues round American accents" on the children's basketball court. It makes for a rich reading experience that translates as well as you'd expect to stage, where it falls on just two actors to play out this range of voices and to differentiate the revolving set of gods and mortals of these various pantheons for the audience's benefit.

Demi's journey from crying child to vengeful young man happens quickly, and it feels like his character gains most going from page to stage, allowing us to follow as he goes from from excited child to confident, self-assured demigod to an inevitable path to hubris and downfall. Of course, it's inherently a bit absurd to watch a tall adult man play a child on stage, and like Philip Hamilton, the other major example I've recently seen, our amusement at Demi's character is abruptly cut short when we realise he's grown up to match his actor's physicality, and we have to start taking his ambitions and their possible destructive results seriously. Because Kwame Odoom doubles as other characters, most notably Sàngó, Òrisà of thunder, who is definitely not powerless (although he spends much of the story claiming he is), the ability to sell Demi's youthful journey is even more impressive.

While the title is ostensibly about her son, it's Demi's mother Modupe who (intentionally) steals the show. Unlike the older myths it riffs off, where women are included simply to be owned and use by men and to suffer without agency, this narrative galvanises her as a woman whose life has been shaped by male violence and impunity, but never taken from her. Despite all their powers and schemes, the male characters all ultimately end up as fuel for her arc, rather than the other way around. It's interesting to contrast the text, which puts her at the head of a chorus of similarly wronged women who were assaulted at the hands of Zeus or other men who used their power to take what they wanted from the women around them, and the stage show, which with just a single woman centres far more explicitly on Modupe's individual rage. It's reflective of Modupe's relative isolation throughout the entire play: because of the way the character doubling falls out, Rakie Ayola plays a lot of secondary characters at the point they intersect with Demi, as well as being the Zeus and the Osún to Odoom's Sàngó. It means that, at pivotal moments where Modupe interacts with these characters, she's in fact alone on the stage, her protectors and her attackers all embodied within the same actor and our reactions to them all seen through the lens of her telling. It's powerful stuff which puts her firmly in charge of her own story as far as the audience is concerned, even while she grapples with the higher powers who act on her life in the narrative itself.

In poetic form, Half God of Rainfall took very little time to put me under its spell; on stage, it takes a little longer, with deceptively light-hearted initial scenes at the start; it's not until the gods take to the stage that the production really gets to show off its actors' talents and the versatility of its storytelling mode. Once you're hooked, however, it's a riveting and immersive experience, with production values to match - an abstract but depth-y lighting backdrop sets the scene for both mortal and godly realms, and a stage which resembles the cracked earth of the original basketball court becomes something more by the end. The non-linear narrative is easy to follow, although the time period between Demi's birth and the moment on the court is a bit blink-and-you-miss-it in both mediums. That said, criticising an epic poem for starting in media res and not quite explaining all the facts about getting there would be a serious misunderstanding of the genre, and the emotional facts are sort of all we need to know about Demi and Modupe's relationship before his rise as the Rainman.

The inevitable constraints of time and space are such that, for most of you reading this, it's not going to be possible to check out the Kiln's staging of this fascinating work - though if North London is in your radius before May 17, I urge you to check it out! - but for me it was an unusual opportunity to experience a text that already pushed me out of my comfort zone in a new way. Anyone interested in explorations of myth and epic form with a focus that goes beyond the well-trodden world of European legend would be well served by checking out Ellams' work, and if you ever get a chance to see it staged? Even better.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 Expanding my horizons, and the horizons of epic poetry in general, in the best possible way

Penalties: -1 Gods exist outside of time, but this stage production does not... sorry, future review readers.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10


POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

Reference: Ellams, Inua. The Half-God of Rainfall [Harper Collins, 2019].