Nightmares by Sandy Jack
★☆☆☆☆ Incoherent
theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39): Fri 1 – Sat 9 Aug 2025
Review by Rebecca Mahar
Sandy Jack returns to the Fringe under the auspices of Lynch Lovers with new show Nightmares at theSpace on the Mile. Described as a “surreal/horror anthology” inspired by Jack’s own nightmares, David Lynch, and The Twilight Zone, it is frankly an incoherent mess.
The Nightmares, written and directed by Jack, start interestingly enough with a man (Jack) who seems to be trapped in the bowels of a building as air raid sirens sound overhead, moving down a corridor with something unknown lurking at its end, tensely narrating his experience.
The cast of Nightmares by Sandy Jack. Pic Lynch Lovers
This lasts only for a few moments however: then for some reason clowns appear, a strange and nonsensical telepathic conversation begins to take place, and one of the clowns is pregnant. A clock ticks, a voice screams that their baby “is out there, open the door, let her in!”
Then the man is in a café, his name is Bill, and so is everyone else’s, and his bill gets eaten, and then there’s another clown and her name is Bill and she eats Bill and there’s a spasmodic repetition of “can you help me pay my bills!” before an abrupt change of lighting and flat statement of “ok that’s enough of that” transports us to what appears to be a therapy session.
This description is, believe it or not, far more coherent than how events transpired onstage. There are many threads here that could have been woven into something intriguing and suspenseful, perhaps even horrific. Unfortunately, this production fails to grasp firmly at any of the straws it has created, continuing only to spew more thoughts in every direction without producing any kind of narrative.
Why?
Who is the Doctor (Pedro Branco) who is not a doctor? Who is Bill in debt to? Why is the performance of the choke so bad? Why is Bill coughing up his teeth? Who is the woman terrified of spiders (Hess Owenhill, who gives the best performance in the show)? Why are we suddenly in the middle of some kind of apocalyptic trench warfare?
A clown in Nightmares by Sandy Jack. Pic Lynch Lovers
In surrealism and horror, questions are frequently left unanswered. However, in good surrealism and horror, this is done purposefully, rather as than a scattershot of attempted Lynchian experimentalism.
Even a series of vignettes, or an “anthology,” as the show is described, must have some kind of unifying theme or overarching narrative to make it into a compelling piece of theatre. Nightmares contains flickers of what could have been, but fails to bridge the gap between a collection of spooky thoughts, and something that makes sense as a whole.
potential
Nightmares is not particularly suspenseful or, apart from one or two jump moments, scary, unless you happen to be afraid of clowns. Its individual performances show a great deal of potential, as do many of the ideas the show incorporates. In this instance, however, Sandy Jack has created a production which can holistically be praised only for its brevity.
Running time: 50 minutes (no interval).
theSpace on the Mile (Space 1), 80 High St, EH1 1TH. (Venue 39).
Friday 1 – Saturday 9 August 2025.
Daily: 10.50 pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Facebook: @TalesfromtheFrighthouse
Instagram: @sandyjackactor
Linktree: @Sandyjack
X: @sandy_r_jack
ENDS
