When you think of the serial killer and former forensic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, what comes to mind?

I would bet good money it’s Anthony Hopkins in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film Silence of the Lambs, talking about eating someone’s liver with fava beans and a nice chianti. This film, an adaptation of Robert Harris’s book of the same name, projected the character into the cultural zeitgeist.

There have been multiple adaptations of Harris’s four novels about Lecter since the first, Red Dragon, was released in 1981. These include Manhunter (1989), the Hannibal film (2001), Red Dragon (2002), the NBC series Hannibal (2013 to 2015), and more recently, a television series Clarice (2021), focusing on the events of The Silence of the Lambs.

Lecter now makes his stage debut in an adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs.

Much like the film, this adaptation sees FBI trainee Clarice Starling sent to interview cannibal sociopath Dr Hannibal Lecter at the behest of her mentor, Jack Crawford. Crawford hopes that Lecter can shed some light on a recent spate of serial killings where women are being flayed by Buffalo Bill (real name Jame Gumb) to make a skin suit. In the conversations between Lecter and Clarice, an uneasy connection emerges. Clarice must find Bill’s latest victim, Catherine Martin, before time runs out.

Before going to see this adaptation, I wondered whether there would be any imitation of the visual elements of the film. Specifically, would there be a repetition of characteristics that came to define the character of........

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