Grimm tales at Truck

The shrieking violins of Psycho – Alfred Hitchcock's chilling masterpiece – proved horror is all the more effective when it is unseen.

Now a new play inspired by some of literature's bloodiest stories – those of the Brothers Grimm – also uses the power of suggestion.

Grimm's Lost Children, a play devised by Hull Truck's Youth Theatre, has turned to the original 19th century tales for inspiration.

"Someone gets chopped up but you don't see it," said Mark Rees, who is co-directing the play with Lee Green.

"You hear it. You fill in the blanks yourself, which is a lot worse in your head.

"When you think back to something like Psycho, you never actually see Janet Leigh being stabbed in the shower scene.

"You just hear those awful violins and see the blood going down the plug hole."

The production began from a desire to do something "darker" in the intimate space of Truck's Studio theatre.

While Mark and Lee had a basic script – following the frightening journey of a young girl who runs away from home – much more was developed by the young cast during a series of workshops.

"Everybody had an input," said Lee.

"It meant they were all able to explore the characters."

Grimm's Lost Children includes well-known characters from the tales, including Snow White and Cinderella, but is far darker than later fairytale versions.

The stories, collected by the German brothers in the early 1800s, were "cautionary tales" – in which bad behaviour was often punished by extreme violence.

Watered down in subsequent years, not least by Walt Disney's animated versions, Grimm's original tales were a harsh shock for the teenage cast.

"When we handed over the stories for them to have a look at they were horrified," said Lee.

"In the story of Cinderella, one of the ugly sisters cuts her toes off to try and get the glass slipper on.

"The other sister cuts part of her ankle off – when the shoes are handed over, they are filled with blood."

For Mark, though, the tales are perfect for children.

"I don't think that kids find the stories frightening, because they are removed from reality," he said.

"They all begin 'Once upon a time' – it doesn't say that this happened in 1855, or whenever – and it's nothing like opening up a newspaper and reading them a story about real-life crime.

"They know what happens is horrible, but there's that distance from it."

To keep the tension ratcheted up, the play runs for an hour and 10 minutes without an interval.

And in keeping with the atmosphere, the young Hull composer Ben Newton has written some suitably Eastern-European flavoured music – with live accompaniment on instruments including the accordion and flute.

With gothic costumes designed by Hull College fashion students and an intricate stage-set, featuring a towering wooden house, the pair hope to lead audiences into this dark world.

"It examines how brutalised people become in order to free themselves," Lee said.

"They have to become evil to conquer evil. We wanted to drag the stories back from being fairytales to being cautionary tales.

"We've taken the 'fairy' out – along with the Disney."

*Grimm's Lost Children is on Wednesday, November 25 to Saturday, November 28, 8pm. Saturday matinee, 2pm, at Hull Truck Theatre, Ferensway, Hull. Tickets are £4.50-£7.50. Call: (01482) 323638