The Woman in Black

Under the banner ‘West End Thriller’ comes this new production of Stephen Mallatratt’s excellent two-man, one-ghost stage version of Susan Hill’s supremely spooky novel The Woman in Black. Opening at the West End’s Fortune Theatre in 1989, it has been running (with Covid-19 exceptions) and frightening audiences there ever since. Only Agatha Christie’s elderly ‘The Mousetrap’ beats it.

‘It was 9.30 on Christmas Eve’, begins the story as retired solicitor Arthur Kipps (Jamie Oxenbould) engages a young actor (Garth Holcombe) to coach him on how to deliver an account he has written of his weird experiences as a younger man. His zero theatrical knowledge and clumsy delivery would seem to be a block on getting the work to be better known, but when the two men decide to swap roles they are soon underway. In a flash old Kipps becomes an expert player of a whole range of parts.

With the actor now playing young Kipps, off they go to Crythin Gifford, on the north-east coast of England and, from there (look out!!), to foreboding and desolate Eel March House, separated from the town by a causeway. Once a day, at high tide, it is completely cut off from the mainland (not that!!).

Now we have unexplained shrieks, galloping horses, impenetrable mists, a running dog, screams of a young child and woman – and the first of several appearances of the mute and mysterious Woman in Black. Oxenbould and Holcombe have a high old time with this ripe material.

The story is ideal material for the Ensemble crew and, lead by director Mark Kilmurry, they attack it with glee. With a minimum of props and costumes, it is enacted using a large trunk and a couple of chairs, plus an opaque wall and a locked door that swings open on creepy occasion, all courtesy of Designer Hugh O’Connor.