Silence of the Lambs on Stage: Theatre Review
Silence of the Lambs on stage is a theatre adaptation of the famous psychological thriller film. It’s a scary play, with great atmosphere, but has some significant differences from the film. Here’s my Silence of the Lambs on stage theatre review.
- Genre: Play
- Setting: A high security prison (where Hannibal Lecter is held), and the home of the serial killer Buffalo Bill
- Themes: Horror, psychological thriller/horror, atmosphere, plot twists
- Perfect for: Fans of the film Silence of the Lambs (although the film’s super-fans might not agree with all of the staging decisions). Also for anyone who enjoys plays that are scary and with great atmosphere.
Overview and plot synopsis of Silence of the Lambs on stage
Clarice is an FBI trainee. She is assigned by her boss, Jack Crawford, to go to a high‑security facility where psychiatrist and convicted serial killer Dr Hannibal Lecter is imprisoned, and to interview him. The FBI hopes Lecter’s insight will assist in identifying an active serial killer known as Buffalo Bill, who abducts and kills young women. The FBI believe that Lecter has information about who Buffalo Bill really is.
Clarice meets Lecter in his prison cell, and they begin talking. Clarice is cautious at first, but starts to get drawn in. Lecter refuses to provide direct assistance without receiving personal information in return. Their conversations become an exchange in which Hannibal Lecter offers limited clues about Buffalo Bill’s methods and motivations while questioning Clarice about her background.
In the show on stage, the conversations between Clarice and Hannibal Lecter are interspersed with scenes where we see Buffalo Bill. We see him lure women into his home, asking one woman for help with sewing before killing her. We learn that he has a pattern of taking skin from his victims before killing them, and leaving a moth cocoon in their throat.
The case intensifies
As the FBI continues its investigation, another woman, Catherine Martin, is kidnapped by Buffalo Bill. She’s the daughter of a powerful Senator. The high-profile case increases pressure on Clarice and her colleagues to locate the perpetrator.
Clarice analyses Lecter’s clues and the evidence gathered by the FBI, gradually forming a clearer profile of Buffalo Bill. Lecter reveals Buffalo Bill’s motive: he is kidnapping these women and taking their skin because he is sewing together a new skin – the skin of his mother, so he can go back inside and reverse the damage done by her caesarean to give birth to him.
Hannibal Lecter’s escape
Hannibal Lecter manages to negotiate a deal with the FBI. In return for his valuable information, he is allowed to move from the high-security prison to a more relaxed prison, where he’ll be able to see outside. However, during his transfer, he manages to escape by ripping the face off one of the prison guards and using that to disguise himself as he escapes.
Finding Buffalo Bill
The FBI think they have a solid lead on Buffalo Bill’s whereabouts, so they go there to confront him. However, Clarice wants to follow up on another of Lecter’s clues. She ends up going to the house of Buffalo Bill – unknowingly at first, but then she realises that she’s found him, and found Catherine Martin still alive.
Clarice confronts Buffalo Bill, in a tense hunt in the darkness of his flat. She manages to kill him, and rescue Catherine Martin.
Following the resolution of the case, Clarice completes her training. We see Lecter living his new life after escape. But his strange relationship with Clarice, that was formed during their interviews, continues. And he leaves her a message, indicating continued interest in her future.
Is Silence of the Lambs on stage similar to the film? What are the main differences?
Silence of the Lambs on Stage does broadly follow the same story as the film Silence of the Lambs. However, there are some fairly big differences in the plot. I’ve seen the film before, but not much, so I’m definitely not a super-fan of the film. To me, the differences between the stage show and the film mostly worked, although there were a few that were a bit weird. However, I saw this theatre show with someone who is a massive fan of the film – and they weren’t so happy with the changes that the play made compared to the film.
The two main differences from the film that stood out to me are these. However, there are loads more differences, but these are the biggest two that stood out to me.
1. Buffalo Bill’s motivation
The biggest difference between Silence of the Lambs on Stage and the film was Buffalo Bill’s motivation. In the film, his motivation is that he wants to be a woman. So he’s making this suit from the skin of women, so he can have the body of a woman.
However, in the play, they change this. They make it so Buffalo Bill is obsessed with his mother, and obsessed with how her caesarean scar negatively affected her supermodel career. So he’s creating a skin to replicate his mother, so he can go back inside her.
To be honest, I didn’t mind this departure from the film. Both motivations are creepy and fit the profile of a mentally disturbed serial killer. So I was ok with the play making this departure from the film.
2. The relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice
The relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice is a bit different in the stage show. In the play on stage, they seemed to get closer. There are more scenes between them. There was almost something verging on a romantic interest between them, which I didn’t get from the film.
On stage, Clarice definitely seemed more taken with him. There was a moment, during the scene where he’s about to be transferred from prison so is out of his cell, that Clarice reaches out to him and grabs both his fore-arms. And there’s a question mark at first about whether Clarice actually gave him the pen that he uses to escape – it’s revealed that Clarice didn’t do that, but it’s still called into question how close Clarice got to him.
What I liked about Silence of the Lambs on Stage
I actually really enjoyed Silence of the Lambs on Stage. I was sceptical about going. I’m generally not a big fan of horror films, and much prefer something a bit more relaxing and romantic. But I was willing to give this show a go, and I’m actually really glad I did. I enjoyed it lots more than I was expecting.
Great atmosphere, set and props
I thought this show did a brilliant job at creating a tense atmosphere. Even though I knew the story from the film, I still felt like it was sat on the edge of my seat at times.
The conversations between Clarice and Lecter were tense, and you never knew exactly where they were going. The scenes with Buffalo Bill were also really tense in a good way. As the audience, we know he’s the serial killer, so there was a good atmosphere when we were watching him talk to and interact with the women he captured, as we knew something bad was going to happen, but it was unpredictable about what and when.
There were plenty of gory props in the show as well – but it was still watchable, with nothing super bad. I did have to look away a bit during the autopsy scene, where Clarice is analysing one of Bill’s victims. But it was good that this show managed to create a prop so gory that it was hard to watch! The whole set was good. I liked Hannibal Lecter’s glass prison cell that was moved onto the stage for his scenes. And often, they’d use the top of it as the scene for Bill’s apartment, which worked well.
Developing Bill’s character, and Hannibal and Clarice’s conversations
I liked that we saw more about Buffalo Bill in the play on stage than we did in the film. I liked how this show built suspense, showing him interacting with an earlier victim, and his new capture. And I felt like it added suspense to the show, to be getting to know Bill better.
I also liked that the stage version expanded the conversations between Clarice and Hannibal. I’m not sure how keen I was on the show’s attempt to make it seem like maybe Clarice was getting drawn in and developing a romantic interest in him. But I liked seeing the dynamic of their relationship. There was something really sinister, seeing how smooth Hannibal Lecter was in his conversation, and how you could get drawn into him without meaning to. It felt fitting, for a serial killer, that he could have that kind of psychological power over people. In the stage version I saw, Hannibal Lecter was played by John Partridge – and I thought he did a good job of living up to the impossibly high standards of Anthony Hopkins in the film.
The ending of Act One
One of the most memorable moments from the show for me was at the end of the first half. The staging is great, showing Hannibal Lecter in his cell talking to Clarice, and Buffalo Bill in his flat on the top, at a higher level. Lecter is finally revealing Buffalo Bill’s motivation. And as Lecter dramatically reveals that Bill is creating a suit of his mother, Buffalo Bill puts on his nearly-finished skin coat and mask. It was quite scary with the lighting, and the creepy human-skin suit and mask. But it was a really powerful and memorable scene.
What I wasn’t so sure about
I enjoyed Silence of the Lambs on Stage a lot more than I thought I would. I know that some super fans of the film have a lot of opinions on the changes that the stage version made from the film. But for me, that was mostly ok. But there were still a few things I wasn’t so sure about.
Clarice almost dating most characters
I wasn’t keen on how the stage show made it seem like Clarice almost dated most characters. There was her relationship with Hannibal Lecter, which felt like it was verging more on a romantic interest than in the film. I liked that the stage version showed her getting more drawn into him and his psychological tricks. But I still wasn’t sure it should have felt almost-romantic, or that she should have so easily reached out to grab him at the first chance she could.
Towards the end, there are also strong hints that she’s about to get involved with her boss, Jack Crawford. And when she goes to interview the moth/butterly expert as part of her work to uncover who Buffalo Bill is, he asks her out as well.
It felt like the stage show tried to make romantic interests for Clarice everywhere. And I didn’t think the show needed that. She is already a strong character, and ends up facing Buffalo Bill alone at the end and winning. She didn’t need all these romantic interests to make her character interesting.
The dress at the end
There was a weird scene at the end about a dress. After Clarice has killed Buffalo Bill, she’s back at the FBI training school. And one of Buffalo Bill’s earlier victim’s friend or sister is there. She gives Clarice a dress that she made for the girl that Buffalo Bill killed. And Clarice puts on this dress, that was meant for the dead girl.
It felt really weird. My only guess is that they wanted to give Clarice a glow-up at the end, so she could end the show wearing a nice red dress, rather than the FBI uniform she’d been wearing throughout the show. But I didn’t think it was necessary to have her wear a dress. And even if that was essential, why did it have to be the dress that was made for the girl that Clarice did the autopsy of?
Hannibal Lecter’s escape
The final thing I didn’t like about Silence of the Lambs on Stage was how they did Hannibal Lecter’s escape. In the film, it’s quite a long scene, full of suspense. In the film, we see the policeman with the bloody face in the ambulance – but then it’s revealed that it’s actually Hannibal Lecter. He cut off the policeman’s face and used it as a disguise so he could escape.
In Silence of the Lambs on Stage, however, it’s not quite like that. They show Hannibal Lecter tearing off the policeman’s face – that moment on stage is gory, but good, especially when Lecter holds up the form off face. However, the scene then cuts. And it’s later said that Lecter escaped out of a window at the prison after doing that.
If Hannibal Lecter escaped out of a window, then why did he need to cut off the policeman’s face? It didn’t make sense. He could have just attacked the policeman and then escaped. The whole point of him cutting off the face, is that he used it as a disguise. I get that an ambulance scene might have been difficult on stage. But still, I didn’t like how the stage version made it pointless about the cut-off face.
Would I recommend seeing Silence of the Lambs on Stage
I enjoyed Silence of the Lambs on Stage a lot more than I thought I would. I would recommend going to see it if you’re a fan of plays that have a horror element and good atmosphere. Obviously it’s not a family-friendly type of show, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a tense, slightly gory stage show, but does a good job at creating atmosphere.
I actually think I enjoyed this show more because I wasn’t super familiar with the film. For me, the changes the show made from the film didn’t matter much, and I thought some of those changes were actually quite good. I could go into this theatre version with little pre-conception of what the show ‘should’ be like, so I could just enjoy it for what it was. However, if you’re a super-fan of the film and know it word-for-word, then I think you might actually enjoy this show a bit less, because you’ll inevitably end up comparing every moment to the film.
