First published back in December of 1995, Clive Barker’s ‘Incarnations’ contained three of the author’s scripts from his early days writing and directing within the theatrical group – The Dog Company. Since the publication of ‘Incarnations’ a second volume containing a further three scripts has been published entitled ‘Forms Of Heaven’ (1996).
The Painter, The Creature And The Father Of Lies: An Introduction – 8 pages
Barker begins the collection with this reasonably short introduction which places the particular time of writing the plays in Barker’s career as well as the concept behind the plays and their inspiration. However, the introduction’s main goal is to set the scene, to whet the appetite for the stories to come, and to hopefully inspire the reader to get involved and once again bring to life the fantastical stories within.
Colossus - 148 pages
During the Peninsular War, in the countryside a few miles outside of Madrid in June of 1811, the stately home of Duke Damaso is hit by an artillery shell, reducing much of the building to nothing more than rubble. Buried amongst the piles of stone are a number of dead and dying, as well as a small number of trapped survivors. One such survivor who emerges from the rubble is the deaf artist Goya who was at the mansion at the time of the explosion painting a portrait of the Duke’s young wife, Duchess Sofia.
Whilst the Duke’s major-domo, Santiago, searches through the dusty rubble of the destroyed building, talk begins to commence as to the Duchess’ involvement with a thief just prior to the destruction. Soon enough a second thief is uncovered from the rubble, with blood stained silverware hidden underneath his shirt. Meanwhile, in order to keep his true identity hidden, the actor and thief, Castropol, enters the remains of the building under the pretence of being a doctor and duly ensures the wounded thief’s swift demise.
And then, from underneath more collapsed masonry, a horrifically crushed body is uncovered. An unrecognisable mound of blooded flesh and broken bone that is dragged up from the building’s debris along with the artist Goya’s glasses, palette, sketchbook and coat. They instantly believe the great artist is dead. However this is not the case, and when he is brought back to the Duke’s mansion by a group of worried nuns, the artist finds that he is met with the opportunity for anonymity, if just for a short time. A case of mistaken identity that allows the artist to play out a different life for a short while; watching, observing and bearing witness to a multitude of bloody events…
Written in 1984, ‘Colossus’ was the third and final play that Barker wrote for the Cockpit Youth Theatre. And it’s certainly a complex and intriguing mishmash of eccentric characters and often quite perplexing events. The sheer volume of characters that come and go; arguing across themselves and jumping from one point of drama to the next, keeps the entire play in a dizzying maelstrom of absolute chaos.
Comical in an outrageously farcical way, the play’s manic tendencies and wacky characters make Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch-22’ (1961) seem like a straight-laced no-nonsense study on WWII. However it’s a comedy that is incredibly difficult to feel a part of, with its slightly unnerving oddness making the whole weirdly-classical play feel like a destructive bombardment on the senses rather than a story that leads the audience from A to B.
Most interestingly of all is how the play’s story had been inspired and formed from the latter artwork of the Spanish painter Goya. Indeed, the story itself attempts to document (fictionally of course) the troubling subject matter for the artist’s ‘The Disasters Of War’ and ‘Black Paintings’ which upon viewing alongside the play, provoke stark and disturbing images of the cruelty nestled behind purposefully out-of-place comedy.
However complex and imaginatively outlandish this character-rich play is, it does suffer immensely from the utterly maniacal state of the chaos. It’s nigh-on impossible to follow the entire series of mayhem when merely sitting down and reading the script. It’s a story that needs to be told by people, through acting, speech and dramatic costumes. It needs to be brought to life by the theatrics in order to properly reflect the exciting lifeblood within it. And as such the script by itself feels just too impersonal and dry.
The play also includes 2 pages of Production Notes which forms a further introduction to the play as well as 2 pages listing the various cast members.
Frankenstein In Love, or The Life of Death – 94 pages
In the vault beneath the palace of President Garcia Heliodoro Perez lies the operating room of Dr Joseph Frankenstein. Here, amongst the human grime of countless atrocities, each of which was performed in the name of science, the cruel dictator Perez seeks refuge. In the city above, carnage has erupted across the streets, as Cesar Guerrero’s ruthless revolutionaries overthrow the city.
With the city in disarray, it's not long before the President has company in his subterranean operating room. The rebel leader, El Coco, together with Juan Thomas Navarro (aka Cockatoo) of the People’s Revolutionary Militia, arrive to be faced with the full extent of the horror that was performed in that dank underground vault.
All eyes turn to Perez, who is duly accused of allowing a litany of sadistic crimes to take place in the vault. A prisoner named Veronique Flecker, who it emerges has been held in the vault for an entire year, where she was subjected to numerous experiments along with being raped, adds further fuel to the President’s guilt.
In the rebel leader’s eyes, there is only one course of action to take now. Flecker is handed a knife and given permission to wreak justice upon the president. Stabbing the President in a purposefully painfully slow manner.
With the President gone the city has a new successor. However, the inheritor of the city is not entirely human – more a stitching together of flesh and bone at the hands of Frankenstein. An atrocious creation, with cannibalistic tendencies and a remarkable affinity with fire. And whilst half the city lays dead, and the other half is in mourning, the city’s new successor, El Coco, begins to set down the manifesto of his new reign.
Although even within the dying embers of the world, there may just be time for a final love to awaken. Even the most despicable of creatures has a heart and a need. As does the creator of such nightmares. It’s a marriage made in the stink of hell…
Written in back 1981 whilst The Dog Company were performing their play ‘Paradise Street’, ‘Frankenstein In Love’ was the company’s first of Barker’s plays to not also be directed by him – instead it was directed by Malcolm Edwards. Following this publication of the playscript, it was later published in a standalone book titled ‘Frankenstein In Love’ (2021) by Phil and Sarah Stokes through their project ‘The Clive Barker Archive’.
The play itself is a dark story of horror and love with a deliberately comical undertone to its delivery. The audience (or reader in the case of the playscript) is purposefully meant to feel at odds with knowing whether to laugh or grimace at what is taking place. Indeed, the play is drenched from head to toe in a wealth of gore and grime, whilst striking at the nerves with plundering dark taboos which are slipped into the strange maelstrom of this perplexing love story.
The end result is an incredibly compelling narrative. We have a ripped-raw humanity that’s exposed to its bloodied bones set within the inevitable bleakness of an apocalyptic backdrop. All of this is of course encased within the loosely fitting patchwork-skin of Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein’ (1818). The strangely horrific blossoming out from the still-pumping heart of the original story.
Okay, so again merely reading through the playscript doesn’t truly paint the active and energetic picture from what Barker originally envisaged. But it still tells one hell of a story, igniting the reader’s imagination with the horrific wonders of Barker’s nightmarish theatrical B-movie story. And within all of the chaos and madness, the reader is offered slithers of ideas which will later develop into aspects within ‘The Books Of Blood’ (1984-85) as well as ‘The Hellbound Heart’ (1986).
It was a morning like any other when lawyer, Samuel Kyle, is greeted at his London home by the Demon Verrier who’s come to take Samuel off to Africa to act as the Devil’s advocate.
Having no real choice in the matter, Kyle is whisked away by the demon, arriving in the sweltering heat of Kenya mere seconds later. It is here, in the dusty grime of this godforsaken land, beside the crocodile infested Lake Turkana, that Satan himself will stand trial in front of a pure and invisible jury. For the Devil is now up for parole, and by the terms of his exile, his appeal for returning to the City of God is to be judged by humankind.
If it’s found that his ministry tended more to evil than good, he’ll be condemned to Earth indefinitely. If, however, his advocate can prove his time on Earth hasn’t adversely affected mankind, he will be duly judged innocent and returned to Heaven.
And so, under the blazing heat of the unrelenting African sun, Judge Felix Popper presides over the court proceedings, assisted by his clerk of court Milo Milo. Acting as lawyers for the prosecution are the barristers Catharine Lamb and Jane Beck. It is here, with the tired and wearisome Devil, eager to have the trial over, the court will look back at key events from the past in which Lucifer has played a pivotal part in the course of history. And in the end, he will be judged for his actions and his eternal fate decided…
“History always begins with a cry”. It’s one hell of an opening line. So perfectly Barker that you know you’re in for a highly entertaining romp of a story. You’ll no doubt be pleased to hear that ‘The History Of The Devil’ certainly doesn’t disappoint.
Written in 1980 by Barker for stage performance by The Dog Company, ‘The History Of The Devil’ is probably one of Barker’s best-known and most performed plays. It should be noted that although generally referred to simply as ‘The History Of The Devil’, the play does also boasts the longer title ‘The History Of The Devil, Or Scenes From A Pretended Life’.
The playscript was first published within the book ‘Pandemonium’ (1991), and following this publication, the playscript was later published in standalone format titled ‘The History Of The Devil’ (2017) by Phil and Sarah Stokes through their project ‘The Clive Barker Archive’.
Despite hosting a deeply ambitious idea for a dramatic play, where the devil himself is put on trial, the playscript was nevertheless written with the Dog Company’s financial limitations in mind.
That said, when reading the script, Barker doesn’t hold back in thrusting his audience through a massive timeline in order to paint a picture of the Devil’s supposed involvement with humanity over a period of some thirty centuries. Indeed, after having arrived in Africa, with the scene for the trial established and the court case having duly commenced, this looking back over Satan’s history forms the main body of the play.
Interspersed with comments and responses from the handful of participants in attendance at this open-air courtroom, we’re taken through scene after scene from the past, all of which are designed to paint a somewhat tragic picture of Satan.
With tongue in cheek, Barker mixes a thick helping of dry wit with elements of cruel tragedy, horror and the downright perverse. Many of these snippets from Satan’s supposed history are warped and reimagined, designed to provide the story with a comically human touch. It embraces history (or a preferred history), conjuring up imaginative revisions of the past to assert how the devil had a hand in so many of these principal events.
Barker’s humanising of Lucifer is an absolute key element to the play. In doing this, and achieving it so very devilishly well, Barker has produced a magnificently engaging and humorous parody on Christian stories – taking much enjoyment from the light-touch of a charmingly charismatic antagonist, who is shown as a far stretch from the exaggerated beast we have been led to believe he is.
To say this is an entertaining read would be an understatement. It’s as amusing as it is wildly imaginative. As with most plays, the story is almost entirely character and dialogue driven, with a great amount of attention put into defining these characters to bring out their individual charm. And in the course of just one relatively quick and eventful act, Barker has achieved this perfectly. Almost effortlessly. From there on in, it’s just an amusing romp through a history of tragedy and wrongdoing. It’s one hell of a tour.
The book runs for a total of 376 pages.
© DLS Reviews
