AN audienceful of avidly excited theatregoers packed into the Towngate Theatre in Poole’s Lighthouse with the full intention of being scared witless by Robin Herford’s production of Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel The Woman In Black.
The long running show comes with an enviable pedigree of peril. The 1993 book has sold more then a million copies worldwide. It was made into a film and a television adaptation followed. It was first performed in the bar of the Stephen Joseph theatre as a “Christmas extra” in1987, was so well received it got a London spot, and has been touring more or less ever since, folding audiences into its atmosphere of impending terror and things that go bump in the night.
My colleague Gerry Parker saw and reviewed this touring production when it stopped in Bath in early December (see Reviews) and I was delighted to catch up with the show at Poole, particularly to see John Mackay, who made such a memorable contribution to productions at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, as well as to many other productions since. The versatility I remember is certainly demanded in this role of Arthur Kipps, the solicitor whose life has been cursed by a memory from his early days, sent to a fret-bound islet to sort out the paperwork of a reclusive, and now dead, client.
Kipps has decided that the only way to exorcise his demons is to say out loud the story of his stay at Eel Marsh House. But he is no performer, so he enlists the help of an actor to make the tale accessible to his select audience of only family and friends.
The play has just two actors, Kipps and The Actor (played here by Daniel Burke). Set in the early 1950s, it has all the feel of a Victorian horror. The few props – a basket, a clothes rack, a chair – are set on an empty stage. We are in an empty theatre for the “rehearsals”, and that means the real audience is drawn immediately into the story.
This is my third experience of the play. The first was in Bristol’s Old Vic, a haunted theatre if ever there was one, and it was terrifying.
Only Robin Herford has directed productions of his friend Mallatratt’s work, so they all have a unity of purpose and mood, but it seems to me that this touring production, with its excellent actors bringing a new and inevitably personal aspect to the characters they play, has been very slightly ramped up for a new audience perhaps accustomed to and expecting a more cinematic element to their horror. Is the soundscape louder and more insistent? Are there more screams? Is that final shattering, terrifying scream now framed with a grimacing face and Munch-esque hand gestures that didn’t seem to be needed before, or is my memory playing tricks? That is what The Woman in Black is all about, after all.
It is hugely effective and brilliantly performed, again, but for my taste, the “tech” is just a tiny bit over done.
GP-W