Is there a theatrical genre that requires more suspension of belief than the ghost story? It’s all well and good to lower the lights, pipe in the spooky sound FX and smoke, and set off a thrum of electronic music to add to our unease. But it’s awfully difficult to forget that behind that upstage door slowly creaking open is a stagehand, and the empty rocking chair that won’t stop rocking has a wire attached to it. Perhaps the naked workings of a live performance explain why relatively few ghost yarns are staged, and even fewer succeed.
The Woman in Black, adapted by the late Stephen Mallatratt from the novel by Susan Hill, is one of the successes, worldwide in fact, and running in the West End since 1989. And there’s little wonder why, given a compelling and twisty story that does its considerable part to keep us focused on the art rather than the artifice. This is the one about solicitor Arthur Kipps, who’s sent to the remote village of Crythin Gifford to settle the affairs of newly-deceased elderly recluse Alice Drablow, encountering both paranormal doings and long-buried secrets.
What sets the play apart is its framing device. Kipps himself has invited a gent known only as The Actor to collaborate in a dramatization of his Crythin Gifford adventure, which he has set down in a leatherbound manuscript. Trouble is, Kipps is no performer—awkward and stilted—so The Actor agrees to take on the Kipps role while his employer will narrate and play all the other parts. Kipps’s initial stiffness is replaced, amazingly quickly, by uninhibited virtuosity, and The Actor manages to absorb the manuscript’s plot and dialogue with effortless, if unaccountable, aplomb. Oh well, it’s as I said: suspension of disbelief.
My first encounter with this script took place in London’s Fortune Theatre, built on the site of a public house, and now in the play’s return to New York it’s found itself in a pub again. The same upper floor of the McKittrick Hotel that served to welcome pre-COVID attendees of Sleep No More is now a working bar, with snacks and (uncomfortable) wooden chairs facing the stage. It’s a happy reunion: Original director Robin Herford, late of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, is back on the case, with West End Woman veterans David Acton and Ben Porter along for the ride, horsecart and trap and all.
At the press performance act one came across a little sluggish, doubtless due to the fact that James Evans was called in at the eleventh hour to step into the Actor role. Whenever an understudy goes on, a sense of walking on eggs is inevitable as actors have new vibes and different rhythms to react to on the fly. This isn’t to say that Mr. Evans didn’t acquit himself capably. His lines and business were smoothly delivered, and after the shocks and surprises of the second act he basked in the well-deserved affection of audience and co-star alike. It’s just that whatever ease is earned through rehearsal and performance repetition always suffers a bit of a blow when one of the principals is changed. Anyway, the fact is that whoever plays Kipps always has the edge in any production. The Actor carries the narrative but Kipps carries the fun, and Acton, with his startling resemblance to a middle-aged Alec McCowen, is a delightful shape-shifter conveying the variously menacing or gloomy villagers.
More certainly could have been done with the tell-the-tale-in-the-pub conceit, visually speaking. As effective as is the sound plot (credited to Sebastian Frost, after Rod Mead’s original designs), I wish Herford had kept Anshuman Bhatia’s lighting low and moody throughout, so as to eschew the glaringly-lit sequences calling our attention to the tacky flattage. But a good time was had by all, this patron and his guest at least. The chills are delivered, the pub treats tasty, and the drinks satisfying. Cheers, prosit, l’chaim and all that.
The Woman in Black opened October 24, 2021, at the McKittrick Hotel. Tickets and information: mckittrickhotel.com
