Pared-back thriller makes for delightfully spine-chilling entertainment
Adapted from Susan Hill’s book by Stephen Mallatratt in 1987, The Woman In Black (directed by Robin Hertford) is second only to The Mousetrap as the longest-running show on the West End. Its popularity is easily accounted for – I found myself both charmed by the refreshingly pared-back production and gleefully jumping out of my seat on cue.
A particularly effective framing device launches the narrative. Haunted by events of his past, Arthur Kipps (Julian Forsyth) enlists the help of an actor (Matthew Spencer) to recount his experiences to an audience of family and friends, in an attempt to exorcise the weighty burden carried throughout his life. We meet the younger Kipps working as a solicitor in London, sent out of town to manage the estate of a recently deceased client. A veiled, gaunt figure makes an appearance soon after his arrival, and Kipps is horrified to discover that he was her sole witness. Piecing together rumours gleaned from fiercely reticent locals and information gathered at the house in the wake of increasingly unnatural happenings, Kipps remains determined to finish his task and face the unknown.
The Fortune Theatre makes the perfect venue for this endeavour: small without feeling cramped, with plenty of thin, winding stairways leading to the stalls, and its narrow stage draped in gauze and shadows. Spencer seems able to make eye contact with each audience member individually as he invites us to embark on his tale, his face lit from underneath as if by the glow of a campfire (with credit to Kevin Sleep’s impressive lighting design). Excellent use is made of minimalist staging and props, and a pair of gold rimmed half-moon spectacles provided by the young actor allows everything to click into place for Kipps, as he gets into the swing of bringing the characters in his story to life. Much humour comes from Kipps’ initial forays into acting, and Forsyth is a joy to watch in his roles as the supporting cast.
The necessary limitations of the sparse props and staging is played for comic effect, with the actors acknowledging the problems of depicting such spectacles as a dog and a pony and trap within the context of Kipps putting on his performance. They over-exaggerate the dog’s arrival, their heads slowly and deliberately following an imaginary pooch; a props basket becomes a carriage on which the actors earnestly bounce along, and it feels like we have been transported to a more innocent, primordial theatrical era. The key here is that the actors welcome us into the conspiracy, letting us in on the conventions of acting and firmly winning us round in the process. The result is perhaps key to the show’s long-running success: disbelief is quite happily suspended for the evening, allowing the imagination to run wild.
The play-within-a-play framing narrative is a wonderful testament to the timeless power of the oral tradition of telling ghost stories, and indeed to the magic of the theatre. In an age of big screen horror entertainment, replete with blood, gore, and increasingly sophisticated computer-generated special effects, much demon-conjuring work is done for you. Many of us have experienced the tense build-up of a horror movie, before finally coming face to face with the titular bogeyman and thinking, ‘Ah, that’s not so bad, really’. That with the potential to scare the most remains the unknown, a shadow darting at the corner of an eye suggesting unmentionable horrors. The woman in black wisely stays her distance, allowing her audience’s imagination to run away with them.
In keeping with a production that is ultra-aware of its workings, we are constantly reminded of our role as an audience, with the young actor encouraging Kipps to make his retelling entertaining, for our sake. This has the deliciously sinister effect of feeling as though the horrors that are inevitably realised on stage are partly caused by our spectatorship, as if our presence has set in motion the spectral wheels of the night’s events.
While occasionally failing to land on the right side of economical – a glowing cross projected onto the back curtain during a funeral scene feels particularly clunky – The Woman In Black guarantees a delightfully spine-chilling evening’s entertainment.