I’ve seen a lot of Master of Fine Arts shows. I’ve worked on a lot of MFA shows, and staged my own as a part of the Six Degrees Festival way back in 2019. Thereby, I think I’m a little better placed to put together a review about a show in the MFA season than some.

Any critique further on in this piece comes with the acknowledgement that these shows are made for very specific assessment criteria, under very specific circumstances and with resourcing and dynamics that might not be present with a non-MFA work.

With that noted, Verdict is an incredible undertaking, and absolutely my jam.

I will not spoil the experience of watching it yourself, as one of the beauties of immersive theatre is being part of the magic, but here’s a short plot summary:

Three of history’s most well-known horror figures – Dr Frankenstein (Nathan Arnott), Dracula (Teddy O’Neill), and Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde (Jamie Honey) – find themselves in Purgatory to be judged. Angel Sariel (Micah Nicholson) and demon Orobas (Jamie Sayers) act as defence and prosecutor, with The Judge (Alex Quinn) ruling over – quite literally – the courtroom with an iron fist. As the audience, and the jury, we make the final decision of who goes Above or who ends up Below.

The Judge’s Courtiers (Pan Clark, Will McMorran, Sam Bennie, Zalán Orbán and Lila Brackley) stalk the courtroom throughout the trials, acting as additional characters and the Judge’s minions throughout. I’ll start with a note about these folk; there’s two ‘scare trainers’ credited in the programme for a reason (Bennie and Brackley) and the Courtiers are genuinely very spooky; with incredible contortion and embodied physical performance. It’s also worth watching them when other things are going on in the scene, the horror is held and consistent, and they work very well together as an ensemble to bolster the wider scenes.

The Judge (Alex Quinn) is visionary within his performance. He captures and enraptures the audience in equal measures, utterly bold and dynamic, performing essentially as a demigod of this world – and absolutely controlling the room in the way the role demands. Immersive theatre isn’t easy, and neither is audience interaction, but he absolutely nails this challenge, and the performance of a despot rings true, despite the absurdity of the circumstances.

Sariel (Nicholson) and Orobas (Sayers) mirror each other, dressed in variations of the same eye-covered costumes, with sheer material around their elbows to symbolise wings. Their dynamic very much harks back to things like Aziraphale and Crowley from Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, and while I would perhaps have liked to have seen a little more concealed power within their performances (believing their powerful statuses within the world’s lore), they are both very sweet, and I enjoy watching their story evolve.

Our three historical horror icons are diversely played, and very impressive. Nathan Arnott’s Dr Frankenstein is torn asunder by what he’s done, Teddy O’Neill’s Dracula puppy dog-eyed and absolutely lost in the sauce (the sauce being blood), and Jamie Honey’s Jekyll/Hyde deeply nuanced and very bold. All three performances are excellent, multi-layered and filthy in their own right, though I’ve always had a soft spot for vampires.

This is a very well-made show. It’s well above even a lot of recent works I’ve seen that haven’t been built within the bounds of a MFA programme. The direction and writing is very solid, a deeply impressive feat considering the multiple audience-chosen narrative paths (created by Alanah Munn/Pan Clark, script edited by Alex Quinn). It is a dark show, and in some points a fetish mush, but very rarely does it ever stray into grimdark, and for the most part manages to wrap in a surprisingly nuanced discussion of the justice system among everything else that is going on. 

The set design (Nathan Arnott, and others) wows me as soon as I step into the theatre. I have never seen a set that large at BATS, with such smart use of the juliet door, and it really gives the piece a sense of scale and world, subsuming the audience into the furniture very effectively. The lighting (Teddy O’Neill) and costuming (Dannielle Arnott) are also well-thought through and I am, once again, impressed by the care and intricacy built into a show that’s only about 70 minutes. 

There are some foibles with Verdict, as there are with any staged work. The sound design could serve the show better than it does, with an underlying overarching ambient design, rather than just effects at key moments. It would also stand to be knocked down a couple of dBs in Qlab, as it’s overpowering the actors’ dialogue at points, to the level where it can’t be remedied with better projection. 

The show also needs a warning for sexual harassment – there’s plenty of content warnings for other parts of the work, and they’re very appreciated, but the Jekyll/Hyde section came out of nowhere in terms of content and contained a handful of lines of dialogue (alongside staging) that are some of the most foul I’ve ever heard in the theatre in an otherwise unrelated show, and hit me harder than I would have liked. The phrase ‘adult themes’ doesn’t quite cover it, unfortunately. 

Aside from these little issues, Verdict is very well done. I’m impressed by the scale of the show, and the level of collaboration and cooperation that clearly has gone into creating it. A show with this many cast members and this much technical detail is never easy, and almost all of it is seamless to watch as an audience member. My only regret is that my own MFA show didn’t have such mentorship, collaboration or boldness.

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