On November 1, Middlebury Actors Workshop returns with Henry James' gothic ghost classic. A country estate. An apparition-seeing governess. Siblings with a secret. The Turn of the Screw channels all the bone-chilling ingredients of horror's greatest tropes through Jamesian genius in an adaptation by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, which the New York Times hailed for its power to "vividly project what is cleverly left unseen and unspoken." In this spare, theatrical telling, Grace Experience, (daughter of author Chris Bohjalian) Middlebury native and now professional actress in New York City, returns to Vermont to play the central role of The Governess. Burlington-based character actor Bruce Campbell co-stars as the rest of the characters, shifting from Mrs. Grose to Miles to the Master with chameleon-like skill.
"We are going to set up the theater so that the audience is on three sides of the central playing area. It's a very eerie story, and we see it play out right in front of you us. You really get into the governess' head. I think audiences are going to love the immersive experience", says director Melissa Lourie. "There is so much we can do with lighting, and shadow and imagination." The story: A London bachelor hires an inexperienced young woman to care for his recently orphaned niece and nephew at Bly, his country estate. As governess, she is to be in charge of the household. His condition for the job; she must not communicate with him or trouble him about anything….no matter what.
Once at Bly, the governess falls in love with the two beautiful children, Miles and Flora. But she soon begins to see the ghostly apparitions of a strange man and a woman. What is more, the children's odd behavior makes her believe they are in league with the specters.
When the governess learns the story of the previous governess, Miss Jessel and her lover, the valet Peter Quint, both of whom died at Bly, she is determined to save the children from the ghosts, who, she is convinced, are trying to possess the children, body and soul.
Are Miles and Flora really in league with the specters? Are the ghosts real at all, or are they products of the governess' fevered imagination?
"A dazzling act of the imagination. Mr. Hatcher has pushed James' clever turn to its furthest degree." The New York Times November 1 – 3 at 7:30 pm and November 4 at 2pm at Town Hall Theater Middlebury. For Tickets and Information visit WWW.Townhalltheater.org or call the Box Office at: 802-382-9222 On Sunday, Nov. 4, there will be a post-show discussion led by Cates Baldridge, an expert on Henry James and Middlebury College Battell-Stewart Professor of English and American Literatures.
November 15 & 16 at 8:00 pm at The FlynnSpace in Burlington. For Tickets and Information visit box@flynncenter.org or call the Box Office at: 802-863-5966