Horror seems to be having a renaissance on New York stages. Arriving midway between Broadway’s Paranormal Activity and off-Broadway’s British import 2:22 A Ghost Story is this unique theatrical chiller that relies as much on auditory as visual scares. The title of Jamie Armitage’s A Ghost in Your Ear proves quite literal, since audience members wear headphones featuring “groundbreaking binaural sound technology” that delivers spooky sounds directly into your ears. It’s like listening to a scary radio play, only with visuals!
Fittingly being presented by Audible, this show which originated at London’s Hampstead Theatre Downstairs features a clever premise. A young actor, Lucas (Lucas Iverson, The Pitt), has arrived for a late-night session at a recording studio where he is to recite a ghost story for an audio book. The gig was arranged at the last minute and Lucas hasn’t read the script in advance, but the jocular sound engineer Sid (Owen Campbell), with whom Lucas has clearly worked before, assures him that he’ll be able to read it from a teleprompter.
After some light-hearted banter and discussion as to whether Lucas should employ a British accent — a quick attempt reveals it to be terrible — the actor launches into the tale, delivering the text into a large microphone disturbingly shaped like a human head. The show’s nifty sound design by Ben and Max Ringham quickly becomes apparent. When Lucas moves from one side of the microphone to the other, the sound shifts from one of side of the headphones to the other as well. When he takes a drink of water and swirls the liquid around in his mouth, it sounds as if we’re adjacent to a river.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★★☆ review here.]
The tale he relates in the first person is that of a young man who discovers that his father whom he hasn’t seen in 23 years has recently died. A lawyer rings him up, requesting permission to hire a company to clear out his father’s home per his wishes. The young man impulsively says that he’ll go to the house to remove the possessions and shortly after arriving gets trapped there by a blizzard. As he explores the creaky old home, things inevitably begin to go bump in the night.
And bump in the studio as well, with the actor becoming increasingly rattled by strange phenomena as he records the story, including objects suddenly moving, an overhead microphone crashing down, and others of a more ghoulish nature that won’t be revealed here.
As the session goes on, the events of the story being told and the scary goings-on in the studio, the latter of which may or may not be in the narrator’s mind, begin to blur together. By the end of the evening, the audience discovers that this was no mere recording session but rather a nefarious scheme to…well, no spoilers here.
Written and directed by Armitage, Tony-nominated for his staging of SIX: The Musical, the production is an undeniably clever theatrical achievement, thanks to both the immersive sound design that makes it feel as if the story were being told to each of us individually and the ingenious scenic and lighting elements that deliver shocking sights that appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. Armitage gilds the lily a bit toward the end with some hokey flourishes, and the effects on display don’t compare to the illusions in Paranormal Activity. But they’re effective nonetheless, especially in the Minetta Lane Theatre’s intimate environs.
Ably supported by Campbell, who spends much of the evening silently working controls behind a soundproof glass wall, the charismatic Iverson delivers a virtuosic physical and vocal performance that’s all the more impressive considering that he came into the show at the last minute.
For all its theatrical ingenuity, however, the show is ultimately more impressive for its technical rather than thematical elements. Both the ghost story being told and the framing device around it feel thinly conceived and not particularly resonant, and the very slow burn makes the production’s 90 minutes feel considerably longer. This is A Ghost in Your Ear that quickly goes out the other.
A Ghost in Your Ear opened Wednesday, October 14, 2026 at the Minetta Lane Theatre and runs through December 12. Tickets and information: audibletheater.com
