Quite who would be enticed by Terror 2007! is beyond me. If it's guts and gore you're after, head to one of the recent slew of "torture porn" films. Stage blood - and stage blood in close-up as here at the Union - is always unconvincing. As for this quintet of horror-themed playlets old and new, they're simply revolting.
The only sense in which The Better Half, a never-seen-before Noël Coward one-act written for London's Grand Guignol in 1922, is terrifying is morally, and even that's at a push. An upper-class wife talks openly of infidelities; we think of better days and Private Lives.
Mark Ravenhill's Ripper, which sees Queen Victoria (Bette Bourne) literally up to her elbows in blood, never rises above the gratuitously offensive. A grubby little evening of cheap, schlocky titillation.
Terror: until 10 Nov (020 7261 9876, www.uniontheatre.org).
Terror 2007! (The Better Half/Kiss Of Death/Sweetmeat/Guns Or Butter/The Halloween Specials)
Union Theatre
Union Street, Southwark, SE1 0LX
