THE Count Of Monte Cristo is Thunder Road Theatre’s first show since being made an associate company at Harrogate Theatre.

Thunder Road come laden with awards and nominations from past endeavours at the University of Central Lancashire, and their latest adaptation – transforming Alexandre Dumas’ sprawling French epic into a “highoctane”

revenge tale – looked typically ambitious.

In the flesh, however, Polis Loizou’s new adaptation, with additional writing by director Terence Mann and Helen Tolson, is not high-octane.

Instead, it is a thoughtful two-hander that, despite the 19th Century story’s multitude of characters and potential for swashbuckling action, mainly occupies the head of one man: Edward Dayton (Scott Hodsgson), a desperate, frightened, isolated writer thrown into a cell for a crime he did not commit.

In such circumstances of suffering, a man can go mad, as indicated by the torturetechnique sequence of brief vignettes that cut to darkness with repetitive music that starts playing on the mind.

Dayton finds solace in reading Dumas’ book, only for he and young sailor Edmond Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo, to merge into one at the prompting of Moran’s Mad Priest, emerging through the floor, thick beard first.

Neither the writing nor the performance is stimulating in the first half of this 90-minute Fringe show, but tempo and intensity of drama do pick up once Dantes conducts his retribution. Moran, the superior performer, reveals his impressive acting range in a series of cameos under interrogation.

  • Until Saturday. Box office 01904 623568 and online harrogatetheatre.co.uk

Charles Hutchinson