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High on jump scares, low on depth – a haunted-house thrill ride in theatrical form

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Ghost Stories at the Peacock Theatre delivers exactly what it promises on the tin: jolts, jumps, and plenty of shrieks designed to send your pulse soaring. And in that sense, it succeeds. I can say, hand on heart, that mine was hammering for much of the evening. But once the adrenaline ebbed, I was left wondering if there was much more here than a collection of well-timed bangs and flashes.

The frame narrative begins intriguingly enough: a parapsychologist addresses the audience directly, lecture-style, guiding us through case studies of supernatural encounters. There’s audience participation (don’t worry, nothing too heavy-handed), discussions on the psychology of fear, and some playful blurring of the line between lecture and performance. It’s a smart set-up, one that briefly suggests a more cerebral exploration of why we scare ourselves for fun in the first place. But as the stories unfold, the ideas put forward in the ‘lecture’ are soon subsumed by a string of horror vignettes that rely heavily on shock tactics rather than substance.

To its credit, Ghost Stories knows how to use silence and darkness. Lighting design is excellent – spotlights isolate characters in pools of light, while the surrounding blackness seems to swallow up the stage itself; you get the impression that any number of ghosts and ghouls could be lurking in the shadows. These moments of stillness and dread, when you clutch the seatrests waiting for the inevitable jolt, are among the most effective. Pacing, too, is carefully judged: the cycle of tension and release is well-timed, and the audience is kept perpetually on edge.

But while the production excels at triggering screams, it rarely lingers in the imagination. The horrors here are of the loud-noise and ‘Boo!’ variety. Themes of loss, suicide and illness surface from time to time, but more as cheap (and sometimes borderline tasteless) shock than meaningful exploration. Compared with something like The Woman in Black – a play I saw a while ago which used supernatural terror to probe grief, trauma and injustice – this production feels shallow, uninterested in using horror as a lens for anything deeper. I’m reminded of Mark Kermode’s observation that horror is a “genre of ideas”. This, however, is closer to a fairground haunted house: fun in the moment, but with little to chew on afterwards.

Performances are solid if unspectacular; no single actor truly anchors the piece. Special effects are effective enough, and there are a few clever tricks, but in a play that trades so heavily on its technical wizardry, I found myself wishing they went further. The midpoint delivers the strongest thrills – at several moments the theatre was buzzing with nervous laughter and exhalations of breath – but by the finale the energy had waned. The ending feels muddled, with both the narrative and the scares fizzling out rather than culminating in a satisfying crescendo. 

Ultimately, Ghost Stories is a thrill ride, nothing more and nothing less. If what you want is a quick, scream-filled night at the theatre, it will not disappoint. But don’t go looking for ghosts of deeper meaning here – they never make an appearance.

Reviewer: Lauren Aitken