Jethro Compton's Frontier Trilogy: Blood Red Moon

★★★
theatre review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
Published 16 Aug 2015

Two feuding brothers. A shack in the mountains. Guns and gold rights. From the first lines of writer and director Jethro Compton's new Western drama you know things are going to end messily. But he's not really in the business of surprises. This play is the first in his Frontier Trilogy, which offers three instalments of straight-up, straight shooting schlock in an immersive wooden chapel setting that unites them in atmosphere, if not in themes. 

Last year, Compton's Bunker Trilogy built a world war one dugout immaculate to every tin-roofed, sandbagged, candlelit detail. This year's set lacks the same visual luxuriance. But its traverse arrangement of wooden benches still makes a fitting setting for this mountain story, scented with pine and placing us cheek-by-jowl with these warring frontiersmen. Levi and Enoch are Biblically-inspired archetypes: Jonathan Mathews plays the peppy, sweet younger sibling, full of faith in the power of striving, while his big bro (Sam Donnelly) is a compellingly mercurial villain, ready to turn to the bottle at the first sight of gold. When Annelise (Bebe Sanders) is hired into the household, she ends up doing far more than cook and clean as the tensions rise and bubble over. 

It's fascinating to see these men pan for gold, water sloshing in wooden troughs inches from your feet, or smell the bean stew of their tin plate suppers. But this aesthetic fascination isn't always matched by an ending that's as clear to see as a mountain grizzly, lumbering towards you through a snowy trail.