There is an appetite for horror among theatre audiences at the moment. West End mainstays of the genre like The Woman in Black are closing after thirty-three years, while new iterations of horror classics like Sydney Theatre Company’s recent Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Belvoir Theatre’s Let The Right One In enjoy sold-out seasons and widespread critical acclaim closer to home. It is an unsurprising trend: theatre companies are eager to capitalise on the appeal of horror following the advent of so-called ‘elevated’ forms of the genre across film and television.

Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre has had skin in the game since its adaptation of Kenneth Cook’s classic of Australian horror, Wake in Fright, in 2019. Malthouse’s new foray into the genre, Monsters, fails to live up to past successes. A collaboration between playwright Emme Hoy and choreographer Stephanie Lake, this one-hour production has been waiting in the wings for two years over the pandemic. Despite this extended gestation, the show seems underdeveloped. It struggles to blend Lake’s evocative choreography with Hoy’s naturalistic script. Ambitious technical and directorial choices cannot resolve unclear plot details and characterisation. The result is a production that compromises cohesiveness for individual moments of evocative spectacle and conceptually thin thrills.

Josie Weise, Alison Whyte, and Samantha Hines in Monsters (photograph by Pia Johnson)

A woman (Alison Whyte) enters a sinkhole alongside a hired caver to find her sister, Claire. Whyte – who narrates the story while acting out the woman’s actions – mimes her descent. She is lit sheerly by three jagged holes cut into a wood-panelled ceiling. Sudden flashes of light upstage reveal the terrifying silhouette of three broken bodies lying in wait (dancers Samantha Hines, Josie Weise, and Kimball Wong). Tension builds alongside the brightness of fluorescent lights and the volume of synth-like base notes. There is another flash of light and another terrifying pose from these three monstrous figures. Lighting and sound design cohere around the woman’s clearly defined actions to increase suspense and exacerbate the threat implied by these looming figures. All the while, she continues to descend into ‘the dark’ in search of her sister.

The effectiveness of the opening to Monsters is a result of its cohesiveness. Each theatrical element evokes the sink hole’s nightmarish architecture and justifies the woman’s trepidation. Her motivation for descending into the space is clear and so allows us to revel in the chilling ambiguity of those three broken forms spot-lit for a fleeting moment. It’s a subterranean ‘Lewton Bus’ by way of Martha Graham – every jump-scare the result of a carefully crafted relationship between an unspecified threat that the show’s design intensifies beautifully.

Whyte is the perfect storyteller. With dynamic modulations of voice and flexible facial expressions, she evokes her character’s terror to thrilling effect through every twist in her monologue. Meanwhile, Hines, Weise, and Wong handle Sarah Taylor’s choreography expertly. Together they contort themselves in ways that cast horrifying shadows beneath lighting designer Paul Jackson’s sheer spotlights. Their broken limbs and expressive poses pepper the piece with arresting body-horror tableaux and tight ensemble sequences that unnerve as much as they entrance. More overtly choreographed sequences – a solo number from Hines was particularly evocative – shine despite increasingly unclear justifications for them in the script.

As the woman descends deeper into the sinkhole, the function of the dancers becomes unclear. The show returns to similar sequences and tableaux, while the script moves away from the plot points that initially helped to contextualise them. The choreography no longer teases us with the possibility of the titular ‘monster’ lurking in the dark. Instead, the dancers personify the cave, moving according to the woman’s observations of the space around her. The woman talks of past spelunkers who have attempted to navigate the sink hole, and suddenly they seem to represent their ghosts.

The most effective use of the show’s dancers occurs near the beginning when, together with the woman, they stand front stage and strike poses made up of flailing limbs and silent screams. Quick-fire blackouts separate each elaborate shape, making the sequence appear like a cinematic montage. A realistic reading is available to us here – we are seeing the emotional turmoil of the woman externalised, for example – but such an interpretation is secondary to the abstract quality of the sequence, one that the woman contributes to not by describing it in literal terms but by allowing the theatrical spectacle to speak for itself.

This evocative moment seemed to presage a story that would become more conceptual as it went along, departing from the naturalism of Hoy’s script to explore more abstract depths. Unfortunately, the show returns almost doggedly to narration that burdens Lake’s gestural choreography with literalism. We are told in explicit detail of a gory murder, an oppressive heat, and a labyrinthine cave system, but these specific points expose the limitations of the techniques available to theatre – and for that matter, dance – rather than make use of them. A fissure grows between the dancers’ impressionistic movements – themselves matched by similarly impressionistic design elements - and a script that relegates both to a purely allegorical or realistic function described in too prescriptive terms for the show’s design to effectively represent.

It does not help that the development of the woman’s character becomes increasingly harder to follow. Her relationship to her sister, Claire – the reason for her descent – never develops beyond its initial introduction. A thin backstory and an odd emphasis on Claire’s childlike ‘puffy jacket’ do little to evoke a character that serves as the primary driver of plot. At the same time, the precise nature of the show’s titular monster becomes increasingly obscure. The unknown Lovecraftian threat that coloured much of the beginning in an alluringly unnamed sense of menace eventually makes way for an ill-defined attempt at psychological horror. The woman is subject to a confusing form of cabin fever that locates the ‘monster’ within herself. It’s an interesting idea, yet once again Hoy’s script reduces its potential abstract qualities to dream sequences that promise a return to naturalism whenever the woman wakes up. Likewise, the show’s conclusion ends with a chase sequence prompted by a more literal monster figure. It becomes difficult to map the conceptual threat of past scenes onto this more conventional monster in later sequences. The result is a confused sense of stakes that adds considerable pressure on the show’s technical elements.

Marco Cher-Gibard’s sound design is an evocative mix of synth-heavy tones and dynamic bass drones. Paul Jackson’s shadow-heavy lighting design is similarly evocative, obscuring sightlines and sharpening the shapes constructed by each dancer. These elements are most effective when they complement clearly defined actions that are consistent with established characterisation or plot. By the end of Monsters, one can feel the pressure on design aspects to offer us a reason to be afraid, rather than help exacerbate our fears. As the show lumbers to its conclusion, sound and lighting try hard to elicit horror in the absence of any cohesive threat or clear characterisation.

Monsters ends with a refrain that has fear-inducing potential should it be considered in isolation: ‘She’s running, it’s hunting, it’s close.’ With a metronomic rhythm, our narrator repeats the ominous phrase. Lighting, sound, and our three dancers try to affirm the line’s terrifying potential with high volume trills and athletic stunts. The lines continue unabated, increasing in pace, while losing their effectiveness. Each repetition reminds us of an approaching scare that never comes. Or a bus that never quite arrives.

Monsters continues at the Malthouse Theatre until 11 December 2022. Performance attended: 27 November.