Review by Simon Jenner, May 18th 2025
It’s not often we see both playwriters and actors drawn from the same school in a debut production. ACT Brighton with its Lantern Theatre doubles as a drama school for actors and writers, whilst producing and receiving fringe theatre shows year-round. This year it hosts an astonishing 38 of these during the Fringe, in both its main Lantern theatre and Grania Dean Studio. Isaac Freeman’s debut play Medium runs three days (May 16-18) in the latter, helmed by ACT’s co-artistic director Janette Eddisford. Her direction’s impressed on the drama’s quality of detail and nuance.
Medium is a two-hander. Luke O’Dell as the contained younger man Thompson, sits at his table in an immaculately evoked 1870s interior, himself coiffed in impressive costumery and make-up. Thompson’s manicured to an alarmingly degree. He’s waiting for the Man (who in fact wrote these memoirs but remained anonymous) played by Roland Hamilton: who duly buffers in cloaked and flustered in less pristine garb. After a riff of a Domenico Scarlatti sonata on accordion, which you’d not expect, the insistent but never overloud ticking of a Victorian clock invokes obsession in the green baize interior. It’s a little like a Magritte, but earlier of course.
Medium’s a snappier title than the original. Ten years with spiritual mediums: an inquiry concerning the etiology of certain phenomena called spiritual 1875. Anonymous and based on a true story, it’s already been turned into an audio play in 2010 that Freeman’s made a point of not hearing. Medium is a work interrogating later Victorian hokum, and something not far from Strindberg’s extremes of control and paranoia. (It should be remembered Strindberg was much taken with alchemy and spirits).
From the1840s through 1920s the surge in spiritualism took hold, particularly contacting the spirits of the young and children: who all too often died too early, or latterly in war – both the American Civil War and World War One. Perhaps the climax came with the Cottingley Fairies Hoax in 1917, which sent Arthur Conan Doyle into a tailspin of belief.
There’s much use of historic characters. Thompson was raised in Boston Mass and has no trace, he’s proud to say, of that refined accent. There he met William Mumler (1832-84), arch spiritualist photographer, who photographed Abraham Lincoln’s widow with the dead president hovering behind. Well it might just be double exposure. Either way, he might just be turning up too. There’s Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927), American spiritualist, suffragist, advocate of free love and who ran for the presidency of the USA in 1872. And her newspaper. Stakes are high. Tonight there’s people arriving who need confirmation.
This is a slow-burn, lovingly detailed piece of theatre. Its atmosphere is undeniable. Hamilton’s particularly effective at suggesting slow crumbling panic, things withheld. O’Dell reins his menace effectively. Occasionally both, particularly O’Dell, raise voices too much when a more menacing, hissier fury would do. These are fresh graduates (though Hamilton acted many years ago too) and it’s a delight to see them slowly settle into who they might be next.
Freeman has wrought much from original material. 20 minutes of this were previously served in an evening of previews and made a strong impression. The thing is to keep that energy up. 70 minutes is briskly-enough acted, though longeurs and drops in energy are more the result of the recalcitrant material needing more – or less.
Though Hamilton exits twice, there’s not enough variety of pace, texture and David Wood’s “suddenlys” to keep our eyes fresh-peeled with words to astonish the brickwork. Sometimes facts need violence to express truth. Freeman has to an extent managed this, shadowing Pinteresque menace and withholding. There needs to be a great finish.
Freeman’s command of material and atmosphere though make him a name to look out for. And this show was sold out: they had to bring in an extra (spirit?) chair. Daring work; and Freeman will dare again.
Production Photography Peter Williams. Sound and Light Operator Erin Buckeridge.
Photo Credit: Peter Williams
