REVIEW: MIDWYNTAR at Old Red Lion Theatre 12-22 December

‘the social horror is more frightening than any potentially supernatural occurrences’ ★★★ ½

         It’s scary enough meeting your new partner’s family for the first time at Christmas; but this family, and this holiday, and indeed this new partner, are harboring especially frightening secrets. Po goes to the village of Midwyntar with her girlfriend Rowan, to meet Rowan’s parents (and creepy cousin). There are some great moments of social discomfort in this portrayal of a small-town family going out of their way to accommodate their daughter’s new girlfriend and her vegan diet. What feels at first like slight awkwardness is actually the first hint of a hidden agenda, as might be expected from the title’s reference to Ari Aster’s 2019 folk horror Midsommar about American graduate students getting mixed up in a cult – though it owes perhaps even clearer debts to Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror-comedy about meeting a girlfriend’s creepy family, Get Out.

There is something that feels interestingly off-putting about the mixture of horror and comedy in this play, as if it is asking us to think about what exactly it is we are laughing at: Rowan’s sinister family, or Po’s situation as an oblivious stranger? There is also something interesting about its relationship to the genre of cinematic folk horror. This is not the parody of Midsommar I expected from the title, but a work of folk-horror in its own right that is very aware of the conventions of the genre. There are some very strange, uncanny, and quite funny moments in this, as when Rowan’s entire family recognizes a television reference – and starts singing the theme tune – that is entirely unknown to Po and the audience. This kind of moment of, we might call it, social horror is probably more frightening than any potentially supernatural occurrences later on in this play.

Midwyntar is described in the press release as a “cosy horror comedy,” and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this description. But I think, having seen this play, that this feels about right – in the way that some murder mysteries are also described as cosy. The horror in this play feels at a slight distance from us as viewers, as if we are blanketed or cocooned by the play’s comedy. It probably about sums it up to say that the most genuinely horrifying moment in this play involves Christmas stockings.

Midwyntar, written by Jacob Lovick & Jack Robertson, 12-22 December, Old Red Lion Theatre, MediumRare Productions, https://www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk/midwyntar.html.

Poster Image: Katie Gabriel Allen

Photography: Alberto Roa

Reviewed by Clio Doyle.