Better wraith than never

Liam Halligan is in love with Henry James’s gothic novel The Turn Of The Screw. Then again, he has lived with the tale for at least half his life, adapted it into a play, and will be touring Ireland with that production for the next month with Storytellers Theatre Company.

Liam isn't a fan of the ‘60s film of the same book, starring Marlon Brando and Stephanie Beacham, which he dismisses as a “porno romp”. He much prefers an earlier cinematic version called The Innocents directed by Jack Clayton. So, what prompted Liam to adapt the play for stage?
“I read the book 30 years ago and didn’t get it, it just seemed to me like a vague ghost story,” he responds. “Then, two years ago I read Colm Toibin’s book, The Master, which is about Henry James at a time just before he wrote this story and I felt I got to know the man, and what he was writing about much better. So, I went back and read the story again with the idea of what was going on in his mind when he wrote it and it all fell into place. It does seem to be your ordinary gothic, Victorian story with a young governess, two orphaned children and a housekeeper in a remote country house. But actually the ghosts are inside the governess’s head and the story is written by the woman, at 50, looking back to when she was 20 and an incident that happened when a child died in her care. She’s writing about that incident in a manuscript.”
And it is the gothic nature of the memories of this woman, which sit at the soul of The Turn Of The Screw, Liam suggests.
“She sees the ghost of this man, who was a gardener and he haunts her as does the ghost of the previous governess, Miss Jessel,” he says. "But she really feels these ghosts are coming to haunt the two children she is in care of now.“
Added to that is the fact that she is an innocent young woman, who comes from the country and she’s sexually repressed and she begins to believe that these ghosts want to possess her and these children. “That’s why, even though the set has real trees and water, as a backdrop, all of this is really very much inside her own head. In fact, all that romping around Brando and Stephanie Beacham did in the movie, in all kinds of positions, is part of the story. But it all goes on inside the woman’s head.”
Despite his apparent distaste for the film Halligan does, of course, just wish he could bring back the ghost of Brando to hover, as in the ghost of Hamlet’s father, over this play! Nevertheless, the director is well served by a fabulous cast that includes Chris Patrick Simpson. Helen Delaney, Ruth McGill and Deirdre Monaghan. He also agrees that the actors in question, as well as himself and the rest of the crew, need to have a love for the play, given that they are going to tour it all over Ireland for a month.
“Every week you have a new venue and two opening nights," he says. “And that demands that they are in top form all the time and can’t give a ‘B’ performance anywhere. All of which makes it all even more exciting.”

The Turn Of The Screw is now touring. See theatre listings for details.