One of the West End’s longest-running productions is on tour at the Liverpool Playhouse this week, and it promises to scare you senseless. Judging by audience reactions on opening night, it’s definitely succeeding.
Based on Susan Hill’s atmospheric 1983 novel of the same name, ‘The Woman in Black’ sees up-and-coming London solicitor Arthur Kipps packed off to a far-flung northern county to wrap up the affairs of a recently deceased client, Alice Drablow.
The Drablow family estate, inconveniently situated at the wrong end of a portentously misty tidal causeway, is the lonely Eel Marsh House. Here, an unsettling encounter in a derelict cemetery sets in train a blood-curdling series of events.
In the novel, the action is introduced via the reminiscences of an older Kipps, driven years later to exorcise his demons by committing his story to paper. Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation shrewdly takes this framing device to its logical conclusion, as old Kipps (Robert Goodale) enlists the help of an actor (Daniel Easton) to recreate his past trauma, in a bid to finally put it to rest.
This play-within-a-play setup brings a fresh and often amusing dimension to proceedings, while also allowing the entire production to be carried by just two speaking actors – with a little help from the spirit world.
There’s sometimes wariness around plays that have been adapted from novels, not least because of theatre types’ occasional tendency to butcher their favourite 500-page tome by having actors flatly and earnestly regurgitate reams of clumsily truncated dialogue direct from the book, sometimes with scant acknowledgement of the fact they’re on a stage.
Mallatratt’s lively reworking not only dodges those pitfalls – gently poking fun at Kipps’ leaden recitation of his own manuscript in the opening – but effectively deploys the dramatic medium to embellish and strengthen Hill’s chilling narrative, creating a truly theatrical spectacle replete with spine-tingling flourishes.
Likewise, some of the novel’s most vivid descriptive passages are included in the script, augmenting director Robin Herford’s vision to striking effect. It’s a happy symbiosis.
The actors both showcase a great deal of versatility: Goodale is by turns endearing and unsettling as old Kipps and the various denizens of hellmouth dormitory town Crythin Gifford – while Easton adeptly runs the full gamut of emotions, alternating between Kipps’ tortured younger self and his present-day theatrical mentor.
The set is deceptively simple at first sight, gradually unveiling its true depth in tandem with that of the story. Props are refreshingly sparse: a wicker basket doubles up as a pony and trap; a cross projected onto the rear curtain is a perfectly serviceable church.
It’s apt that audiences are asked to submit to their imaginations in this way, rather than being spoonfed every visual detail, not least because it accentuates the fear factor when the hauntings begin.
There are lots of genuinely scary, hair-on-end moments, conjured up by a heady cocktail of creepy sound effects, judicious use of lighting, and of course, supernatural intrusions – which conspire to elicit gasps, screams and nervous laughter aplenty from the audience.
It would be unfair to deduct points for a second-act power surge that rendered the stage without light or sound for several minutes, culminating in a cameo not by the titular spectre, but by a stage manager announcing a short hiatus. These things happen, and to the best of us; the gremlins were culled swiftly and professionally, and the show went on.
But for a play that relies so heavily on the aggregation of visceral tension, the blip was unfortunate – and it does perhaps underline the limitations of theatre that relies on effects and ‘bumps in the night’, rather than emotional resonance, for its payoffs.
Another drawback of the hair-raising moments is their occasional tendency to lose the audience, like the Nine Lives Causeway, in a sea of terrified shrieks and thereafter, giggles – which from time to time risks drowning out an important part of the story that follows, and leaves suspension of disbelief somewhat wanting.
It’s probably for this reason, most of all, that substantive ghost stories are tricky to pull off in a theatre – but for the most part, ‘The Woman in Black’ makes a thoroughly successful job of it. It’s a great night out, and not difficult to see why it’s stood the test of time on the West End.
Long may it continue – not least because the auditorium was packed with teenagers, presumably for GCSE purposes, but most of whom were audibly having a whale of a time; and a play that helps excite and inspire a new generation of theatre-goers must surely be welcomed.