Dead but not buried

12:53pm Tuesday 8th January 2008

One way to cock a snook at death, as figured out by artistic types like painters and writers, is to live on through your work. And the legacy of Ira Levin is evident for all to see at South London Theatre, with a production of his classic chiller Veronica's Room.

The author and playwright - known for horror and suspense stories such as Rosemary's Baby and the Stepford Wives - died just two months ago, aged 78.

In Veronica's Room - written in 1974 - an elderly couple meets Susan and her date in a restaurant and lures them into a mansion and then the bedroom of Veronica - a dead girl who was a doppelganger of Susan. The tale then takes some very sinister twists.

The original US production in 1973 starred Tony Award-winning actors in Eileen Heckart and Arthur Kennedy, who played the elderly pair. Director Mark Davies, who joined South London Theatre about five years ago, says: "The play was recommended to me so I read it, and I re-read it, and I read it again. Whichever way you read it, you can't make sense of it, you can't quite tell who is playing who.

Mark adds: "It is not a traditional horror - there are no vampires or ghosts - but it is very twisted. These people seem to have had something bad happen to them, and they do these things to cure it or re-enact it.

"It was a bit of a coincidence about Ira dying, we had just started rehearsing and then he died. I hope he didn't hear about the show!"

Veronica's Room; South London Theatre, 2a Norwood High Street, SE27 9NS; to Sat, Jan 12, 8pm, £8/£5, members £6/£4, call 020 8670 3474 for booking.

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