'The Dybbuk' is Reviewed Here
THIS IS LONDON
THE STAGE
CAMDEN NEW JOURNAL
TOTALLY JEWISH
WRITE WORDS
BRITISH THEATRE GUIDE
All Music
Composed by Ross Blake
Co Engineered by Gaverick De Vis
Mixed and mastered by Tobias Warrick Jones at the Bladderghandi Studios.
'The Dybbuk' Soundtrack Performance Credits
Guitar - Gaverick De Vis
Drums - John Gilett
Violin - Eloise Goulder
Cello - Philip Noyce
Trumpet - Felix Barnes
contact -
[email protected] - for more information
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The Ride of the Wild HuntThe Ride of the Wild Hunt was a devised play for children and adults, loosely based on the story ‘Count Karlstein’ by Philip Pullman. It was performed for two nights at the Malmesbury Carnival in Wiltshire, with all profits going to charity. The play was devised and performed by a group of friends, most of whom studied drama at Goldsmiths College in London, and original music was written for the play by Ross Blake and Helen Preddy. It was produced by Theatre of Relativity, for whom this was their first wholly devised production.
The story centres on two young sisters, Lucy and Charlotte. When their parents are tragically lost in a shipwreck, the girls receive a mysterious letter from their only living relative, Count Karlstein. They are taken from their school in England and sent to live with the Count at his isolated and foreboding castle in the Swiss mountains. When they arrive, however, they quickly discover that his intentions towards them are not good. They overhear a conversation between the Count and his loyal servant Snivelwurst, in which they plan to sacrifice the sisters to the demon huntsman of the mountains, the dreadful Zamiel. Count Karlstein is in fact an imposter, having made a bargain with the demon to usurp the true Count, in return for a human sacrifice (or two!).
The girls manage to escape the castle, but in order to escape the clutches of Zamiel and his Wild Hunt, and defeat their wicked uncle, they need all of their courage and resourcefulness. They must enlist the help of a traveling magician, a brave woodsman, and their formidable headmistress, Miss Davenport. When Lucy is kidnapped by the count's minions and taken to be sacrificed, Charlotte must devise a plan to keep her safe and to turn the demon's vengeance upon the count. At midnight on All Soul's Eve, Zamiel and the Wild Hunt sweep through the mountains to claim their sacrifice. Can they be stopped in time?
We had a lot of fun devising the play, but were almost constantly scared by the fact that we had no set script to work from. We all read the book several times, and started to talk about the most important events in the story and how we could imagine they could be staged. The hardest part
for me was simplifying a very complicated plot for a large cast of characters, down to 70 minutes of material for a cast of only six, without losing the feel of the book. We had to cut a lot of very good stuff out of the story, and had to make sure that two characters which one actor was playing did not have to appear onstage at the same time!
We wanted the play to be an exciting and magical experience, so we tried to have a lot of the action in the audience, and used large pieces of cloth to bring the set out over their heads. We used lots of shadow play and lighting to try to create strong and colourful visual images, and we used a surround sound system and layered soundscapes and music to draw the audience into the world of the play.
Our thanks to everyone who helped with this project.
