Ernest and the Pale Moon Review (The Old Market, Hove)

Ernest and the Pale Moon Review

If you take Edgar Allen Poe's 'Tell-Tale Heart' and cross it with the infamous scene from Hitchcock's 'Psycho', then you begin to get something which starts to resemble Ernest and the Pale Moon, the dark and eerie four-man show (actually two men and two women to be precise!) from the award-winning Les Enfants Terribles Theatre Company.

The story is based around Ernest, a tall pale fellow who was recently institutionalised, and looks at how he ended up there from his apartment block on the 13th floor, 7 rooms along on the corner.

The script is very clever, using multiple narrators all talking in the third person and a non-linear structure which pieces the story together as the play develops, with a lot of overlapping events told from different perspectives, in a similar way to the films Vantage Point and Memento.

The performers were all strong actors as well as competent musicians on the side, playing on-stage instruments from the cello to the accordion, the harmonica to the glockenspiel, which added a real live suspense to the soundtrack.

The stage design was simple but very effective, with the platform bearing the asymmetrical door-frame being the centre-piece throughout the performance.The lighting was also spot on, creating the dark Gothic mood which the story called for, particularly with the uses of a lantern and torches on-stage.

The story was full of plot twists and at little over an hour in duration did not drag at all, if anything leaving you wanting more at the end. The final performance of the show at The Old Market is tonight (Thursday 22nd May) at 7:30pm, so why not spend an evening in the company of Ernest, and the faint glow of the pale moon, if you dare...