Big Finish’s main range for Torchwood is ending, and the penultimate release Curtain keeps standards as high as ever.
This episode is a send-off to the character of Bilis Manger, played by the late Murray Melvin. The highly established British actor loved his role in the show, and revisited it eight times with Big Finish.
It was due to be a ninth with Curtain, but the theatre-based story by David Llewellyn that had originally been envisaged off a suggestion from Melvin himself had to be reworked following the latter’s death in 2023.
James Goss was responsible for the subsequent script that was taken to the recording booth, and it pays homage to Bilis, his actor and a generation of British actors who cut their teeth in theatre. As with so many of Big Finish’s Torchwood releases, the outcome is a piece of audio drama that is not only excellent but can easily be enjoyed by somebody with no idea what Torchwood is.
A burned theatre
‘Curtain’ begins with three actors reuniting outside the Palace Theatre, a venue in the vicinity of Swansea and which has been restored following a fire 20 years prior. The three main characters — the pompous and movie-famous Roger Cartney, the often typecast Mathilde Balfour and the insecure Dermot Lacey — were all performing on the night of the theatre’s burning.
All three are immediately believable, with a quickly established social dynamic and differing levels of attachment to the present. Roger loves it due to his fame, Mathilde feels like recording self-tapes to appear in Star Wars is probably a waste of her time and Dermot is basically cowering by her side and probably haunted by his past even before Bilis appears.
And it’s a young Bilis.
Without spoiling either how the story was produced or the story itself, it’s easier to say that Colin Ryan is playing ‘Mr Manger’ through Curtain. He’s a huge fan of the trio, particularly the specific performance they were doing when the theatre burned down, and provides them with scripts so they can do a reading of the play before performing it for real. Since it’s a reading, there’s no sign of an audience.
Having the cast perform a drama within this audio drama is great, although may be a little too confusing for some, since the listener is deliberately left guessing when the going gets grisly if it’s part of the play or… part of this play.
The Swansea Devil
‘Doctor Faustus’ is the main inspiration, and combines with further devil imagery from Mephistus in German literature and some Shakespeare. Outside the theatre is a statue called the Swansea Devil, and in the theatre the play’s characters are selling their soul to a devil for unlimited fame, lust and gluttony.
Roger is set up to be dislikeable from the off, so it’s easy to wish for his demise, but revisiting the past actually casts Dermot as a villain of the industry in older times. He is the first to crumble under the theatrics of the performance for Mr Manger.
It doesn’t require too much scheming for Mr Manger to make Roger revisit the past too, since he has a brilliant and well established ability to silently enter scenes and intimidate through his mere presence. Mathilde seems to be the strongest, and fills in more gaps about their first attempted performance of the play and how it led to the theatre’s demise.
Then the name “Torchwood” appears.
The ‘is this part of the play’ or is this part of the play we’re listening to element ramps up, with added sound effects to help distinguish when the dangers are very real. But often only one of the actors is experiencing the horror while the other two are just acting. And Mr Manger is there to sooth them when they feel unable to continue the play, as well as scare them.
Eventually they get far enough through the script to complete the interaction with the devil, and there is a musical crescendo to mirror the stakes getting to their highest.
Flashback!
A very familiar Torchwood character then cameos in a flashback, no spoilers, and it once again changes the perspectives of who this trio of actors were 20 years prior and how much they’ve changed since. Typical Mr Manger letting nobody be a hero.
Sometimes he only delivers one line of dialogue, but Mr Manger’s interruptions are usually superbly foreboding and thanks to his soothing he is even considered an angel. That opens another box of horrors in the British acting industry.
“Can one work for a monster?”
“Honey, we’re actors. We do it all the time.”
As with many Bilis stories, the theatre is a location that he can’t leave without luring others into a trap to enable his escape, and this helps explain why Mr Manger is who the actors are interacting with.
To delve further into the final act of Curtain would probably be too spoiler-ridden, but it packs in another twist about its characters and a very familiar voice towards the end. A superb curtain call, fitting of Murray Melvin’s acting impact and the character of Bilis.
Curtain, by David Llewellyn, is available now from Big Finish.
