THE COLLECTOR
Camden People’s Theatre

IN a divided society, it is not surprising we have fears about what action one disillusioned individual might take over those he feels marginalised and ignored by, if given the power.
After spotting art student, Miranda Grey (Katherine McDowell), from his office in the Job Centre, Frederick Clegg (James Topping) knows she is ‘the one’. But knowing she and her friends would never give him the time of day he follows, watches and admires her from afar.
Until, one day a lottery windfall changes things, and he decides to put Miranda in a position where she cannot fail to get to know him.
This is an unusual kidnap situation, Frederick is a butterfly collector and loves to catch and kill rare specimens.
With his new financial liberation and a beautiful middle class artist as his latest specimen, he upgrades to a large isolated house with a cellar.
Clegg does not count, however, on his captive being a defiant and willful spirit, who believes trapping any soul to be the highest travesty. She is vindictive and torments him for his droll and unimaginative ways and through a perverse power struggle, turns him into her personal slave.
Clegg’s obsessed love starts out as tender and noble as it is possessive, blind and destructive. But it becomes apparent that Clegg has not thought through his plans and is trapped between enduring his captive’s abuse and the inevitable result if she is to escape.
Things take a turn for the worse. What starts as a psychological battle between someone who loves to capture, record and classify life, and someone who believes in experience and expression, soon turns into an ongoing existential debate.
Much of the second half seems like a prolonged lead up to an inevitably chilling and dismal end. The Collector, by John Fowles, first appeared as a novel in 1963 before he wrote The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It has been well adapted for the stage by playwright Mark Healy.

Until July 10
0870 0600 100