The Margins

Performed at the suitably bewitching hour of 22:15, The Margins is an original supernatural horror play written by David Skeele and performed by students from the wonderfully named Slippery Rock University.

Set in a haunted mansion (where else?), six psychics attempt to better the results of a previous supernatural study and invent a ghost in the space of an evening. Considering the brevity of the play, which is staged for a little less than an hour, Skeele manages to pack a lot in. The events of the evening are skillfully interwoven; with character feuds, a love triangle and childhood traumas all thrown into the mix. These fascinating sub-plots, deftly entwined and organised by Skeele's script make sure that The Margins is far from a linear, one-trick-horror-shop.

While the central story of The Margins is engaging, it doesn't offer any challenge to gothic horror conventions, staying strictly within the confines of it's genre (psychic experiment goes scarily awry in haunted mansion). In fact, the success of the production lies in its characters. In a cast of seven, Skeele builds up a unique, complex and comprehensive background for each one. There is, for example, Phyllida Franks, a gay historian (played beautifully by Erin Berger) who is scorned in love and desperate to avenge the grievances suffered by women of the past.

With this production, Skeele and his talented cast have produced a horror play which is worth watching, less for its ability to scare than for the fact that this is a character-driven, emotionally intense drama. As a result, if the horror elements were excluded, The Margins would still stand-up as quality theatre.