Lullabies of Broadmoor: The Demon Box

Anyone chancing upon the Royal Mile at this time of year would easily entertain the notion that madness and creativity are brethren. Victorian artist Richard Dadd carried both with him. The Royal Academy member created most of his phantasmagorical paintings of fairies and otherworldly beasts whilst in Bedlam and Broadmoor prisons–he had murdered his father to appease the Egyptian god Osiris.

The Demon Box is one part of a quartet of overlapping plays about real life Broadmoor's inmates. It may sounds like a Pantera concept album, but is more akin to a BBC Play for Today.

Dadd is painting a tapestry for the prison theatre. But when another, equally disturbed inmate becomes his apprentice, his visions of Egyptian gods and Shakespearean sprites return.

At its best Steve Hennessy's script manages to create the low-key Gothic hum that pervaded such 1970s shows as Tales of The Unexpected. The ending in particular unnerves like an E.R. James ghost story.

With actual sprites and demons running about the stage, the relatively high concept is kept grounded by the four cast members, especially Chris Bianchi, who plays Dadd as a brittle man both seduced and terrified by his madness.

Ironically, it is when the play dwells on creativity and the art Dadd is producing that the pace slows and you start to crave the demonic.

As Dadd comments when talking about why he killed his father: art is about sacrifice. This offering should appease those looking for a late night chill.