LYKOS: THE DANGER IN THE MAZE
by Paul Ramsey
Directed by Spencer Butler
Cast:
Alan Chisholm, Tony Wilds
THE AUTHOR
Paul Ramsey was born and brought up in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, but by the time of Festival 18 had been living and working for several years in the United States. Primarily an actor and writer, he gave performances of his own material and also wrote libretti for contemporary composers. His other works included the intriguingly titled Songs and Dances of Pontius Pilate.
Unlike Michael Moriarty, Ramsey had no previous connection with The Questors, and Lykos: The Danger in the Maze introduced his work to the company as one of the three writers new to The Questors represented in the 1977 Festival.
THE PLAY
Set nominally in the Edwardian period, Lykos: The Danger in the Maze is a two-character psychological mystery with strong supernatural overtones. Stephen Hart appears initially as a young patient in a mental hospital, where his doctor, David Haig, attempts to uncover the experience that caused his breakdown. As Stephen relives what happened, the action moves to his ancestral country house, where he has been mysteriously summoned and encounters his cousin David. Dominating the grounds is a maze whose centre holds the object of their search.
Ramsey gradually abandons conventional distinctions of place and time as the story develops into a journey through memory, vision and fear. Combining the structure of a mystery thriller with psychological and mythic elements, the play depends strongly on atmosphere, imagery and language, moving between beauty and menace as its characters approach the centre of the maze.
PHOTOS
PRESS RESPONSE
The critics were united in finding Paul Ramsey’s supernatural psychological drama obscure to the point of incomprehensibility. Michael Coveney in the Financial Times dismissed it as an “almost incomprehensible hotch-potch of purple prose and therapy session”, involving a young man trapped by his ancestral history and a sinister interrogator. Tony Cohen in the Ealing Gazette found the play deliberately mystifying, abstract and “bloodless”; rather than the promised mixture of mystery, thriller and supernatural drama, he encountered pretension, an endless stream of words and no sustained dramatic action.
Kitharistes in Questopics tried unsuccessfully to disentangle the play’s possible meanings: whether Hart’s experience was reality or fantasy, whether he was patient or prisoner, and whether the drama concerned Freudian fears, Jungian racial memory, lycanthropy or confused and merging identities. With “no clue” to guide the audience, the reviewer was left, appropriately, “struck dumb”.
Nevertheless, both Cohen and Kitharistes praised the production. Spencer Butler’s direction kept a potentially static play moving, while the lighting, sound and shadow effects created atmosphere and visual interest. Cohen also commended the sincerity of Tony Wilds and Alan Chisholm.
The general verdict was therefore that considerable acting and production talent had been expended on a play whose meaning and dramatic purpose remained inaccessible.
The Financial Times
The Ealing Gazette
Questopics
QUESTORS ARCHIVES
LYKOS: THE DANGER IN THE MAZE