Pontypool at WMC: Unsettling realism and mirthful absurdity

Molly Stubbs

I’ve never much been one for Halloween. Sure, I’ll watch a horror movie every now and then, but I see no reason to consign this act to October.

I like a thrill year-round and, according to my husband, dress up as a witch once a month every month.

But there is another reason why I’ve missed out on spooky season 2024. For me, it has been show season.

In the last four weeks, I’ve been to see more plays than you can shake Macbeth’s bloody sceptre at, and I’ve had it proven time and time again by phenomenal writers and producers and actors, working on every kind of budget imaginable in every space imaginable, that my somewhat cynical attitude to Welsh theatre is perhaps unfounded.

Commitment

Nowhere proves this more than the mainstay of the art form, the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC), with its often decades-long commitment to producing shows of the highest quality.

In July, I dragged my family to watch Michael Sheen in Nye, and talked about it for so long afterwards that they purchased for me the signed program that now hangs proudly in my office.

And last week, on the 1st of November, I went to watch Hefin Robertson’s theatre adaptation of the radio adaptation of the film adaptation of Tony Burgess’s much-lauded horror novel, Pontypool Changes Everything, aptly named Pontypool.

While the original takes place in Ontario, this version, directed by Dan Phillips and Nia Morris, is set in south Wales.

It follows Grant Mazzy (Lloyd Hutchinson), a disillusioned radio host hailing from Northern Ireland who finds himself trapped both physically, in a radio booth in a chapel basement in the Valleys, and ideologically.

While the rest of the world becomes progressive Mazzy, like many others, has two feet firmly planted in a present that’s quickly becoming the past.

But Mazzy’s attacks on gentle parenting, disbelief in mental health, and outspoken opinions on pronouns, all carried to the citizens of Pontypool across the airwaves from Beacon Radio, are not as hateful as you might first expect.

Though his producer, Rhiannon (Victoria John), is certainly not a fan, his archetypal brashness and wit means the audience falls more in line with Megan (Mali O’Donnell), the young intern who treats Mazzy like a grandpa at Christmas dinner – prejudiced, but you just can’t help but love him anyway.

Horror in droves

These character relationships and Mazzy’s aforementioned outspokenness render Pontypool’s first act more a comedy than a horror, so much so that, when the proverbial refuse did start to hit the fan, the audience at the showing I attended couldn’t help but let out a titter even in the most serious moments.

Though if it’s true horror you desire, Pontypool has it in droves.

There are supremely creepy government-issued alerts made all the more frightening with lockdown still fresh in our minds, gristly practical effects courtesy of Marcus Whitney that require all hands on deck for the post-show reset, nail-bitingly tense scenes of complete darkness next to lightning storms of strobes masterminded by Simisola Majekodunmi, and all the spasmodic contortion, choreographed by Lucy Glassbrook, that any horror worth its living-dead-body-count must provide.

The total embodiment of their roles on part of the actors, particularly Doctor Phillips (Ioan Hefin), steps so gracefully across the line of unsettling realism and mirthful absurdity that it almost presents an opportunity to choose how terrified you’d like to be.

Maximalist

Personally, I marvelled almost too much at the beautifully developing character arcs and unfolding narrative to remember to be scared. Even so, a few spine-straightening jump scares brought me right through the fourth wall and into the chapel basement.

Also working to this end is a set so maximalist yet so accurate that it evoked long-lost memories of being a girl guide who spent a significant amount of time in eerie churches and run-down community centres.

While there are no scene changes — the audience is trapped alongside the characters — you won’t miss them.

With boiling kettles and working taps, windows that open to let powdered snow fall in, and a whiteboard that just won’t stay attached to the wall, Cory Shipp has not simply designed a set but a world that breathes and moves alongside its inhabitants.

My only gripe is that from my seat in the middle of the row, one I rushed to grab as it’s generally considered the best spot, I sometimes had my view of the characters blocked by a particularly thick wooden beam that forms the corner of the radio booth. I must stress that this happened very rarely, but if you don’t want to crick your neck then I’d suggest a seat on either the left or right side of the auditorium.

Speaking of the radio booth, Pontypool in all its iterations relies heavily on sonics, and sound designer Ben Samuels had his work cut out for him in bringing this to stage – not that you’d guess from the effortlessness with which he’s carried out this duty.

While the actors aren’t mic-ed up, resulting in projected voices that add to the fraught tone the more the show goes on, there are several mics strewn about the set. In addition to Mazzy’s broadcast microphone, there are two smaller mics for Rhiannon and Meg to relay news to him, each that crackles and buzzes and relays the actors’ speech in a different delightful way.

When the disembodied voices of characters outside the studio, most notably Beacon Radio’s eye in the sky Ken Loney (Carwyn Jones), take the metaphorical centre-stage, they leap literally from speaker to speaker around the audience to surround us and close in.

When the characters are overwhelmed or frustrated, this overstimulation is amplified by three different mic feeds playing all at once with an added voice from radio commercials or jingles.

At points, so much is happening on stage that the only way to take in and afford every detail, every blink-and-you-miss-it moment, the attention it deserves would be to watch the entire show again.

That was the feeling I left Pontypool with, and it’s a rare one. I would’ve been more than happy to wait around on one of the Millennium Centre’s sprawling seating arrangements all night if it meant that, the following day, I got to go back into the Weston Studio and witness Pontypool for a second time.

While the latter half contains all the highbrow subtext any literature student would go feral to sink their teeth into, it’s more than possible to watch Pontypool purely as a horror romp that’s just as fun as it is frightening.

So, if you’re looking for a show to bridge the wintry no-mans-land between October and December, I can happily confirm that this is very much it.

Pontypool is showing from 30 October to 16 November 2024. For more information about the show and to book tickets, visit the Wales Millennium Centre website.