The Woman in Black – Darlington Civic Theatre

Author: Susan Hill

Adaptor: Stephen Mallatratt

Director: Robin Herford

Reviewer: Ian Cain

The Public Reviews Rating:

The popularity of ‘The Woman in Black’ cannot be disputed. Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 novel began life at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough in 1987 and is now in its twenty-first year at the Fortune Theatre in London’s West End. It has enjoyed several hugely successful national tours, been translated into twelve languages and been performed in 41 countries.

The story centres on a young solicitor’s clerk, Arthur Kipps, who is summoned to Crythin Gifford, a small market town on the north-east coast of England, to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, an elderly widow who lived alone in the desolate and secluded Eel Marsh House. The house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway, and at high tide is completely cut off from the mainland with only the surrounding marshes and sea frets for company.

Kipps soon realises that there is more to Alice Drablow than he first thought. At the funeral service, he spots a woman dressed in black, with a pale, cadaverous face. Over the course of the next few days, while sorting through Mrs Drablow’s copious papers at Eel Marsh House, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and haunting by the eponymous woman in black. The hauntings include the sound of a horse and trap in difficulty, followed by the screams of a young child and his nursemaid.

The cast of only two performers (aside from the intermittent spectral appearances of the woman in black) deliver faultless performances. Robert Demeger, as Arthur Kipps in his later years, and Peter Bramhill, as the young actor who has been asked by Kipps to bring his experiences to life in the form of a private performance for his friends and family, are both superbly cast and work extremely hard throughout.

It is odd that a performance with such a small cast and limited use of scenery and props can command the attention of an audience and have them biting their nails to the cuticle. However, the ingenious use of sound effects and lighting combined with good old fashioned imagination results in a theatrical experience that is filled with tension, fear and suspense. So much so, in fact, that some of the more dramatic moments were met with spontaneous screaming from a party of schoolgirls in the stalls!

‘The Woman In Black’ is a production that requires to commit themselves to believing that a props basket can represent a desk, a bed, a train carriage and a cart. But, if you let your imagination do the work and immerse yourself into the story, you are guaranteed one of the best nights at the theatre that you’ll ever have.