Terrifying — the play and the teenage audience

The Woman in Black, Lowry, Janice Barker

SPINE chilling, tingling, frightening, shocking . . . it should have been all these and more.

Excellent lighting, sound effects, a clever yet simple set, and the play-within-a-play device should have made this adaptation of the Susan Hill novel by playwright Stephen Mallatrat transport the audience into a world both ghostly and terrifying.

Unfortunately, the Lyric Theatre was filled with school parties of excited and excitable teenagers who shrieked, screamed and laughed at inappropriate moments, ruining the tension, and at times drowning the lines.

Director Robin Herford has only two actors to bring out the chilling tale, but both Peter Bramhill as the actor and Robert Demerger as Mr Kipps are masters of their parts.

Robert Demerger becomes a series of characters by turn, and the simple act of placing a pair of spectacles on his nose and sliding down into a chair can evoke a careworn lawyer, and a heavy greatcoat and a scarf transform him into a carter.

The ghost story, of the lawyer who is obsessed because he believes he and his family have been cursed by a spectre of a woman in black, is played out when he calls in a young actor to help him exorcise his fears by playing out the tale.

The play has all the trappings of a classic haunting — a remote house with many rooms in a distant part of the country, cut off by the tide and surrounded by deadly marshes, the sounds of a horse and carriage which disappear into the mud — and of course the mysterious dark woman’s figure.

So where is the line drawn between fantasy and reality? It all seems quite clear cut until the deadly final scene.

This production comes, we are told, from the West End, where it has been running for 21 years and been seen by over seven million people.

And the play’s success owes just as much to the simple but clever stage design by Michael Holt and atmospheric and chilling lighting by Kevin Sleep.

To be terrified out of your seat be quick to buy a ticket, but check on the school parties. It ends on Saturday.