Review: The Woman in Black at the Liverpool Playhouse ****1/2

Sometimes you simply have to pause and marvel at our desire to be scared witless – surely humankind being a strange outlier among the rest of the animal kingdom.

True, the experience is accompanied by the knowledge the films, TV shows, plays, stories or ghost hunts which provoke that thrilling adrenaline spike are a safe kind of scare. We remain physically, if not psychologically, unscathed – who hasn't had the urge to check over their shoulders or under their beds at some time?

Ghost stories are some of the most compelling frighteners because they harness the dark corners of our own imagination, and none so completely as Susan Hill’s modern classic gothic chiller The Woman in Black.

Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation, penned four decades ago as a lo-fi Christmas entertainment for the bar space of Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre, rightly retains its place as one of the most satisfying and scary theatrical experiences even, it turns out, for those of us who have seen it before and thus know what is coming.

It’s director then and now, Robin Herford, provides a gripping masterclass in generating the maximum suspense and fear from the most basic of elements.

This is a story told without the aid of modern life’s ubiquitous technology, save for the expert combination of Kevin Sleep’s atmospheric lighting and Sebastian Frost’s evocative sound design which work in perfect union with Michael Holt’s artfully draped set to create a deeply unsettling canvas for the deeply unsettling tale.

It’s 1951, and the nervy Arthur Kipps (Philip Stewart, on as understudy for John Mackay) wanders backstage at a shrouded London theatre, where he has hired the services of an actor (Daniel Burke) to help him tell the terrible tale that has haunted him for 30 years, and by doing so, hopefully finally exorcise it.

The reluctant Kipps is persuaded into a live performance version of his dense and somewhat turgidly written testimony, with the actor playing the younger version of the troubled solicitor, and Kipps taking on all the supporting roles.

Above and top: Daniel Burke as the actor in The Woman in Black. Photos by Mark Douet.

A versatile handful of props - a couple of chairs, a large wicker hamper and a small rail of coats and hats - are combined in variations to create different characters and scenes populated by desks, beds, train carriages, pony traps and church altars, much in the vein of The 39 Steps. Just with added horror.

We're finger clicked in and out of this play within a play throughout the first half before the events of 1921 take precedence for much of the second.

Talking of the first half, it ends abruptly in something of a discombobulating anticlimax, which left the audience on opening night wondering if perhaps there was more to come before the house lights went up.

There are actually three distinct time frames at play: the ‘current’ day, 1921 and 60 years earlier than that when the events which haunt Kipps’ tale first took place.

Above: The Woman in Black. Photo by Mark Douet.

Sent north to the coastal town of Crythin Gifford and the mysterious, mist-shrouded Eel Marsh House to sort out the affairs of recently deceased elderly recluse Alice Drablow, the young Kipps finds himself in an unsettling world of strange figures (chapeau to the unnamed third cast member of this putative two-hander), strange sounds and a feeling of dread as all-pervading as the frets that roll in off the sea as thick as a London smog.

There’s no need to imagine these as a liberal use of haze/theatrical fog (bringing back memories of many an 80s disco!) blankets the stalls in an impenetrable bank of smoke during the evening.

This creeping sense of fear and tension is ratcheted up expertly by the skilful Burke and Stewart, drawing the audience on relentlessly towards the horrifying denouement and the chilling realisation of what it all means.

How do you know when you’ve succeeded? When you perform to an auditorium comprising at least 50 percent teenagers and you can pretty much hear a pin drop – apart from the moments of surprise which prompt a reaction delivered at impressive decibel levels. Job done.