Brecon Walsh

Grim and Darkly Humourous: Eraserhead, performed by Theatre Of Hell

In 1978 David Lynch screened the premiere of his quirky and unsettling masterpiece Eraserhead (1978) in New York to a mere 24 people; it went on to establish Lynch as a celluloid auteur. Thankfully Maj Green and Ewan Cameron's Theatre Of Hell stage version was performed to a full house. Kurt Vonnegut once remarked upon seeing George Roy Hill's 1972 direction of his novel Slaughterhouse 5 that it was the only film he had seen that totally transposed the novel to screen. Theatre Of Hell's depiction of the cinema is an ingenious interpretation of an equally startling and disturbing work.

For those unfamiliar with Lynch's black and white nightmare/comedy, it entails the nervous and nocturnal life of a sartorially-challenged 1 950-style geek with a serious hairstyle, living in a bleak and ultra-drab apartment in the boondocks of Philadelphia. Eraserhead meets the shy girl and the fly girl next door, and fathers a mutoid infant chicken-like monstrosity with the former. She flips out and returns to her poultry fancier parents; the baby monster cries incessantly, driving everyone to amateur surgery and murderous mayhem with big scissors. The vamp from next door seduces Eraserhead, and the limbless infant monster cries while they do the horizontal mambo. Theatre Of Hell's set is festooned with a tree, a bedsit and a tiny stage where the shy girl does the bizarre vaudevillian routine from the dream sequence in the film. Eraserhead extracts giant red rubber wriggling afterbirth and lets fly across the set and into the twigs. This scary but hilarious aspect of Maj Green and Ewan Cameron's performance gets seriously psychotic, resulting in a compelling and visually arresting mise en scene that faithfully renders the film's narrative contents and "kooky" atmosphere palpably recognisable. Vinny Jones plays the vamp with aplomb wearing a Calamity Jane outfit. Daniel Flood plays the grandpa, helping flesh out the grim and darkly humourous narrative. Theatre Of Hell's dramatisation includes a masterfully crafted black and white Super-8 version of the opening sequence of Lynch's film, recreating the stumbling protagonist in the industrial wasteland and evoking the feel and flavour of German expressionist cinema.

Theatre Of Hell's neo-Dada performances continue to bewilder and astonish those who witness them both here and in Europe. Audiences with a penchant for perverse hilarity and anxious angst will certainly have enjoyed this night of fractured flickers and vaudevillian vivisection.