By Keri O’Shea
Outside of the novella itself, Susan Hill’s quintessentially British ghost story The Woman in Black is perhaps best-known to most Brutal as Hell readers via last year’s film starring Daniel Radcliffe as the unfortunate solicitor Arthur Kipps, or maybe through Nigel Kneale’s (ahem, superior) televised version from 1989, but it has also been running since the 1980s as one of the world’s longest-running stage productions. Having seen, and enjoyed both filmed versions of the story, what could the theatre offer which equalled or surpassed these? I went along to the York Theatre Royal to find out why the play boasts such longevity, in a day and age of movies which can give us flashy special effects and big budgets. And, like any good ghost story, it turns out that the terror is all in the telling.
The first thing to say about The Woman in Black stage production is that it makes a feature out of its economy. Being obviously unable to create a perfect representation of all the characters, places and objects mentioned in the novella, it pares things right back, so that all which is present on stage for the bulk of the performance is an old chest, a clothes rail and a chair – although a few more props creep in as the play moves along, and are very well used to maximise their impact. Something as simple as the projected outline of Eel Marsh House onto the backdrop provides just enough for your imagination to do the rest of the work. Careful use of lighting bolsters the effect of these small but effective touches to a surprising degree; the stage was frequently plunged into darkness, with the actors using torches or lamps in order to barely pick out the outlines of objects on the stage…
As for the actors themselves, the economy of the surroundings also extends to the cast. Largely comprising two people only – and one ghost, barely present and all the more effective for it – the story itself was rewritten by the late playwright Stephen Mallatratt so that in the stage version, we meet an older Arthur Kipps who seeks to exorcise his demons by performing the events of years previously in the form of a play. To do this, he enlists the help of a young actor. As they begin to work through Kipps’ manuscript, with the younger man taking the role of Kipps himself, the story proper unfolds.
During the first act, I found the meta-narrative style quite difficult to get into, mainly as the actor/older Kipps frequently step out of their roles as young Kipps/other characters to reflect upon what they’re doing. Some of this is played for light relief, which for me made getting into the right frame of mind to be scared a little tricky. Once the central premise was set up, I didn’t feel as though I needed to keep being reminded of it; however, by the time we had reached the second part, the momentum of the story took over and definitely carried me along with it.
So – the story gradually unfolds via the idea of someone feeling the need to tell it for the sake of their own sanity; as they tell it, via an actor, the story proper comes to the fore, The burning question here, of course, is – is it scary? At times, the answer to that is definitely yes. The play as written can’t resist lobbing in a few jump-scares to get the audience’s nerves on edge, something which I’m not fond of either on screen or on the boards, but the play is really at its best when it’s developing its more slow-burn scenes of horror. Very straightforward things scare us, really. We don’t need much – just a hint that something is incorrect, that natural laws are being messed with, that our expected patterns and rules are being subverted. A door opening seemingly of its own accord, a strange noise, a figure glimpsed out of the corner of one’s eye…all of these things can scare us, and The Woman in Black has them all. It is very effective at generating atmosphere, and holding back on the woman in black herself is absolutely the right thing to do. I will admit to getting a shiver in one scene, where Kipps has been asleep at Eel Marsh House, wakes, shines his light and catches the woman’s skeletal face looming over his. All of the tied-to-chairs shenanigans in the world can’t equal that sort of sensation, which is one of the reasons I’m so pernickety about supernatural horror. I want it done right. As much as it took me a while to get into the narrative style here, The Woman in Black does it right.
I’m not a regular theatre-goer by any means but I very much enjoyed this show; for any horror fans who would like to experience the genre through a different medium, one well-acted and realised, I’d say that catching The Woman in Black is an excellent way to spend £20. See it if you can.