The paranormal has long captured the interests of writers, directors and actors alike. You can even go into bookshops and find whole shelves devoted to the genre. Werewolf Priest!: The Lamentable Ballad of Father Hank Grimby, the latest production from writer, director and producer Levon J Polinelli both continues this burgeoning genre, and successfully parodies it.
Werewolf Priest! is an ambitious and entertaining work, gleefully jumping between genres and cramming as many horror movie tropes into the script as possible.
The story of Werewolf Priest! perhaps isn’t necessarily the most original and from the outset, I already had a rough idea of where the play was headed (though I didn’t anticipate one of the final big reveals). This isn’t necessarily a problem, for me much of my enjoyment of the production came from trying to recognise different references and watching how the director and actors played around with the genre conventions.
One of the production’s main highlights is it’s casting, with each of the cast turning in a strong performance. However, it was Magnus Danger Magnus who stole the show as “renowned” explorer and “demon hunter” George Waggner, a villain of almost Disney proportions – it was a role that Magnus attacked with unabashed enthusiasm. Sven Ironside also gave a great performance as the eponymous priest and I thought that his interplay with Siobhan Dow-Hall gave the romance between their two characters an air of believability and credibility.
My only minor criticism of the production was that occasionally, it felt like it was trying to do too much and trying to be too many different things at once. As I said at the beginning it was an ambitious work, and at times I felt it just slightly overreached and I felt like Polinelli didn’t really know what he wanted the play to be – a comedy? A drama? Or a musical? There were elements of all of them within the production.
Despite my minor quibbles I did find myself enjoying Werewolf Priest! It is an entertaining and enjoyable production that doesn’t take itself too seriously and plays around with the horror conventions to great effect. Plus any production that produces a mock Victorian penny dreadful as a program gets a thumbs up from me.
Werewolf Priest! plays through to June 7.
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