In an uncertain world, rarely is there a shortage of free-floating dread (dubbed "anxiety" by the shrinks). Since putting a name to unseen terrors provides an illusion of control, this inescapable condition has been attributed, at various times, to forces spiritual, natural and industrial. Prominent among the first is the Biblical prophesy of a holocaust destroying all earthly life (excepting its adherents, of course). The invention of the atomic bomb, however, introduced the secular specter of a cataclysm annihilating both good and bad alike. The propensity of nebulous fears to intermingle is what propels Shirley Jackson's tale of a snobbish, self-centered clan confronted with a premonition of impending doom. The newly ascended matriarch, who proposes to eject most of her recently deceased son's kin from the commodious family residence, is skeptical of an elderly aunt's claim to have been warned by an ancestral ghost of cataclysmic danger beyond the boundaries of their gated estate, but soon its members are busy converting their home into a bunker ensuring preservation of their privileged lifestyle — burning the books in the library to make room for increasingly frivolous stores of survival supplies, for example, and retaining the virile young librarian for purposes of repopulating the scorched earth. That's one interpretation, anyhow. Literary scholars may recognize hints of Edgar Allan Poe's “Masque of the Red Death” in Jackson's premise, as science-fiction buffs may hearken to the fantasies of H.P. Lovecraft. A decade later, witchcraft conducted by the sullen pre-adolescent heir to the property would be the culprit, or perhaps a conspiracy perpetrated by relations threatened with eviction. Our author never reveals the source of the delusional behavior, and if adapter/director Paul Edwards decides to throw us a big, fat, aeronautically inaccurate clue at the last moment, it could still be only the imaginings of frightened children in hiding. In performance, the degree to which the individuals in this uniformly unpleasant tribe recognize their own shallow values imposes a brittle candor upon those resisting the growing malaise, while reducing those capitulating thereto to the helpless dithering found in Agatha Christie thrillers. A stage with more shadowy corners (where lurk our own hobgoblins) would also better serve this brand of creeping unease. No one can deny that Jackson spins a shivery-good yarn, though, nor that the cast assembled for this City Lit production of The Sundial doesn't exercise unwavering control of its atmospheric complexities.
