Writer: Susan Hill

Adaptor: Stephen Mallatratt

Director: Robin Herford

Reviewer: John Roberts

The Public Reviews Rating:

Susan Hill’s novel turned stage production The Woman in Black has gained massive cult following since Stephen Mallatratt and Robin Herford’s original outing in Scarbourgh in 1987 and has been scaring people in theatres all over the world and the West End since.

Arthur Kipps is an elderly man, who needs to share the story of Annette Humpries, a woman who has haunted him since he was sent to attend the funeral of Mrs Drablow and to deal with her estate in the remotest parts of northern England. Kipps decides to hold an evening to share his experiences with close friends and relatives in a hope that everything is finally laid to rest, but with little presentation skills he hires the expertise of actor in hope that he may shed some words of wisdom to enlighten and lift his recital. Eventually the Actor takes on the role of Kipps and Kipps taking on the roles of the other characters bring his haunting story to life.

Robert Demeger (Mr Kipps) and Peter Bramhill (The Actor) are excellent throughout, they are true masters at the art of storytelling, an art form which I feel is quickly dying in the profession. They manage to keep the attention of every member of the audience, who hang on the edge of every syllable waiting to know what happens next. Bramhill as the Actor is very suave and energetic, there seems to be real enjoyment with emulates from him as he performs and this is indeed a delight to behold, Robert Demeger is delightfully eccentric, and really comes into his own when portraying a host of various characters throughout the evening.

Director Robin Herford has crafted a typical on stage horror, that rests the audience rocking on the edge of comfort and painfully unsettling anxiousness, with every beat or perfectly executed movement, he manages to terrify and grip his audience in a psychological and endorphin induced rush. It is needless to say that a lot of the horror comes from subtle moments of silence and well executed lighting and spine curdling sound effects, helped by a simple but wonderfully effective set by Michael Holt.

But having said that this is not the best I have ever seen the production and I think this is for two reasons, firstly the programme finally acknowledges ‘The Vision’ and I feel this loses any real impact of her arrival into the show, producers please seriously think about removing this again! And secondly I felt the auditorium of the Lyric Theatre at The Lowry was too vast an auditorium (the Quays would have been a perfect fit), having only ever seen the production in intimate 500-600 seat spaces, something of its closeness to the action and the story was lost in the vastness, which to me weakened the overall impact of what otherwise is still a spine chilling and wonderfully executed ghost story and long may it continue to scare millions of more people over the next few years!

Runs until Sat 23rd Jan

Tags: 2010, Ghosts, Lowry, Peter Bramhill, Robert Demegar, Robin Herford, Salford, Susan Hill, Tour, Woman in Black