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# Review: Tales of Terror
- URL: https://lichfieldlive.co.uk/review-tales-of-terror/
- Published: 2009-07-16T21:16:34.000Z
- Updated: 2010-11-15T13:59:41.000Z
- Author: Annette Rubery
- Tags: Reviews, What's On, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-22 21:52

![The Happiness Patrol's Tales of Terror](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e3/90/e390c3da-0866-4d2a-8ffe-ca4999d7ce1c/content/images/lichfieldlive-co-uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/tales-of-terror-image.jpg)

The Happiness Patrol's Tales of Terror

Having been impressed by [The Happiness Patrol’s](http://www.happiness-patrol.com/?ref=lichfieldlive.co.uk) imaginative staging of The Masque of the Red Death at the Old Joint Stock in Birmingham at the end of last year, I was curious to see what the Walsall-based company would pull out of its hat for the Lichfield Festival.

The result – Tales of Terror – turned out to be a typically quirky, typically dark voyage into spooky tales by MR James (whose stories were popularised for a modern audience by the BBC in its series *Ghost Story for Christmas*) and Lafcadio Hearn (also known as Koizumi Yakumo) whose writings were heavily inspired by Japan.

Using minimal props, Tales of Terror’s three actors – Natalie Wilson, Dawn Butler and The Happiness Patrol artistic director, Philip Holyman (pictured, left) – told five stories to the audience, such as Hearn’s *The Reconcilliation*: a tale of a Samurai whose thoughtless betrayal of his wife ends in a curious haunting. Butler’s telling of Hearn’s *The Woman of the Snow* really benefitted from a direct style and simple gestures, while Holyman brought out both the humour and the horror of James’s *There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard*.

The Happiness Patrol’s talent for the weird, the sinister and the spooky was not only evident here and in The Masque of the Red Death (adapted from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe) but in a recent tour by sister company Little Earthquake, The Haunting, which recreated a Victorian seance in historic locations across the Midlands. Undoubtedly, it’s a company that’s headed for great things; you can catch Tales of Terror at the Garrick Studio on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th at 7.45pm.