As if a power-hungry lawyer wasn’t a scary enough concept on its own, add in a curse and you’ll be checking over your shoulder for days. Or at least I was after seeing Keith Barker and Thomas Morgan Jones’ latest thriller, The Veil.
It’s a tale as old as time: someone makes an unholy trade for success but it comes with a steep price. In this case, a lawyer (Byron Abalos) makes a deal with some otherworldly entity, and as he reaches new heights professionally and financially, his world falls apart. Or at least that’s what he tells us at the meeting he’s called the audience to.
The studio space at Crow’s Theatre is small, intimate and served as the perfect place for this spooky solo show. The set appeared to be overflow storage, like we’d walked in between productions. It seemed like a mistake until a frantic Abalos banged on the studio windows, desperate to find his way in.
As Abalos shared his hair-raising story, the disorienting Madame Blavatsky-style parlour tricks began. A water bottle drops. Was that a flashing light? Were those sirens outside? The lighting and sound design of Jareth Li and Ashley Naomi was subtle and effective.
The Veil is simple, gripping nightmare fuel.
This article appeared in the 2025 Dec – 2026 Jan issue.
