From Vertigo’s Snake in the Grass

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Snake in the Grass by Vertigo Theatre
Vertigo Theatre
Saturday, January 26 - Sunday, February 17

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Vertigo Theatre

“Scaring people in live theatre is one of the great challenges,” says director Vanessa Porteous. “The opportunity to get scared in the theatre is very exciting.” She doesn’t mean the usual theatrical tricks — the boogeyman who misses his mark and stumbles out from the dark, or spare bed sheets caught on a harness that appears to be a ghost at just the right angle and with just the right light. Porteous has something more sinister and psychological in mind for her directorial debut at Vertigo Theatre with Alan Ayckbourn’s Snake in the Grass.

Vertigo Theatre seems an odd place for Porteous to find herself in. After all, she is the eclectic director of such lauded shows as Alberta Theatre Projects’ Syringa Tree and Pinocchio, a director who seems unfettered by genre. Then again, Porteous proudly admits she read the entire Agatha Christie catalogue at the age of 11. At Vertigo Theatre, she has the chance to recapture those moments of suspense at the heart of her love of the murder mystery. “I don’t think I’ve ever done two shows that were the same,” she says. “The directorial approach is the same, but there are certain challenges when you’re doing a psychological thriller with a lot of suspense. You can’t cheat the audience of their suspense.”

Not that you could mark Snake in the Grass as typical murder mystery fare. There are no great detectives wandering parlor rooms or dastardly villains twirling mustaches. Instead, it’s a wickedly sharp and shocking thriller in the Hitchcock mode. The play follows two sisters as they return to the remains of their childhood home and discover new truths about their father’s death and their own abused pasts. It unflinchingly deals with issues of domestic violence and sexual abuse, and how those traumas get dragged into adulthood. Snake in the Grass is the kind of play you don’t expect from Vertigo Theatre.

“The way the play addresses violence and abuse is intriguing and dangerous,” admits Porteous. “You’ve got to honour that. This is exactly the right way to discuss these questions. I’m not trying to soften it or harden it for political or audience-based reasons. Even a supernatural thriller is based on deep fears we all have and the theatre is a good place to explore those deep fears. One of our deep fears is about our fellow human beings, our families, turning on us and becoming monsters.”