The Black Cat
Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds/Touring

THE CONSIDERATIONS when adapting a classic book for the stage are much the same as those when covering a much-loved song. The performer can choose a traditional approach, as does Jeff Buckley with Hallelujah or take a more radical one, as in Nirvana's angsty version of The Man Who Sold The World.

Those parallels are repeatedly referenced in this retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat by  LaPelles Factory, a two-hander from Olwen Davies and Ollie Smith, with the duo wrangling over how faithfully the macabre short story should be updated.

With irreverent insights into the process of staging and adaptation, the performers deliberately take opposing stances.

Davies plumps for a Vincent Price reinvention that has a more progressive attitude towards women than Poe and the horror genre as a whole, culminating in her enacting five alternate story endings, all of which end in the female character dying.

Although these are well observed takes on the genre’s misogynistic tropes, they lack a satisfactory bite, an underlying problem in a production which is never quite as smart or funny as the potential within the material and the chemistry between the pair.

The second act, especially, suffers from a dearth of momentum. Davies’s use of a cabbage being stabbed during a murder scene is an effective insight into the work of foley artists but the appearance of a stuffed corvid — in honour of Poe’s famous poem The Raven — and an interpretative dance of the story suggest an idea that’s run out of steam.

Tours until November 24, details: lapellesfactory.wordpress.com