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Rachel and Edmund have just bought a small seventeenth-century
labourer's country cottage, one which, however, has been tastefully
renovated and converted. Dan and Margaret have come to spend
Christmas; Margaret gives them a present -a somewhat primitive and
violent African carving of a woman in childbirth, a fertility
symbol. Later, as Rachel is playing the harpsichord, she suddenly
gets a sinister feeling of deja vu. Sortly afterwards, all the
electricity fails. A power cut? Perhaps, but the phone is out of
order too. It is the start of a series of macabre events which mount
relentlessly to a bizarre and terrifying climax involving all four
characters, and ending in a mystifying, tragic report coming over
the television set into an empty, brightly lit room.
Author's note - The Exorcism was written in
1971, at a time of great affluence in England, and when famine was
raging in Biafra and Bangladesh. The play must be produced as a
ghost story, but with the horrific realities that underlie it and
were its starting point borne always in mind. ,br.The first professional
performance of this definitive text took place on Krakow, in a
Polish translation in May 1976, and the first English
performance at the Arts Theatre Belfast in
1979. |
