I never really thought that much of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It had a few "eerie" moments in it, but apart from that I couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about. Maybe I'm just another statistic from a numb generation, desensitised to violence by bloody video games and too many afternoons watching Tom and Jerry as a child (if you are to believe that then one wonders what the YouTube generation mutate into).
Or maybe it just wasn't very good and the questions are of the nanny hovering over the child with the remote and not the child itself.
Still, it was interesting in that it was ‘based' on a true story. And for this reason, Leatherface too seemed worth a look.
The play is based on the real life story of Werner Bloy. A poet who was obsessed with the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and ended up keeping two women hostage and being executed by a sniper.
To me the play had the potential to be more interesting than the Chainsaw movie. Perhaps because it seemed more rooted in reality and, in some way, in some place in the darkest corner of our minds, we can identify with him a little. As unhealthy as it is, I am sure we could all admit to having obsessions of some description at some point or another. Even ones that would seem quite obscure in the eyes of another.
And, for the most part, Leatherface is a very interesting play. We all know where it is going to end, but we still want to take the journey and try and understand how we got there. Because, from what I know, Werner Bloy was not a bad person. But he did do a terrible thing. It is hard for anyone to understand his actions without understanding him.
Unfortunately, however, there is not really much else going for this production. If we didn't know that it was based on a true story, it would come across as being very average indeed. It isn't helped much by the performance of the lead actor, Jim Townsend. He displays flashes of brilliance, particularly when he becomes frustrated and more like the man with the saw. But otherwise it seems like very textbook acting and I just didn't believe him. I was looking forward to the end just to see him get a bullet in the head.
Perhaps that was the point and that his knowledge of his own boring self is what pushes him into this fantasy world, but you could just see that he was acting and acting in an almost amateur like fashion. A bit more time, perhaps, could have been spent preparing the real him and not the ‘him' that he wanted to be.
In the end I left a little disappointed. Yes, it was quite interesting. But, as movies of past, present and future teach us, you cannot rely entirely on a ‘based on a true story' tag to get a genuine round of applause.
Times: 6 to 15 August, 12.15pm