The Tell-Tale Heart is based on a teeny-weeny short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The full text appears in the programme notes. Here’s the gist. A madman kills his landlord and is haunted by a ghostly heartbeat that prompts him to confess his crime.
Anthony Neilson’s adaptation turns both characters into women and gives away the ending in the opening scene. An English writer lodging with a young Irish landlady is accused of murdering her by a detective. At a stroke, all uncertainty is effaced. The only remaining mystery is why Neilson can’t understand his chosen genre. He tries to interest us in the causes of the murder, and we watch the developing relationship between landlady and lodger. The English writer is a haughty prig whom Tamara Lawrance struggles to invest with warmth or vitality. (Not her fault, the characterisation is feeble.) The Irish landlady is a needy and eccentric chatterbox who aches to befriend her new tenant.
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