Haunting Julia

Published Wednesday 28 May 2008 at 14:50 by Kevin Berry

An Ayckbourn revival begins the summer-long Things That Go Bump season.

Haunting Julia is about loss and letting go, about living with genius and it is a ghost story. Few will sit calmly through its chilling ending.

Grieving Joe, played by Ian Hogg, has made a shrine/exhibit of the student bedsit where his daughter Julia committed suicide. She was a deeply troubled musical genius.

Julia’s boyfriend Andy, now married, has been invited to see the bedsit which has become part of a performing studies centre dedicated to Julia. Then Ken appears, claiming to be a psychic, he turns out to have been the janitor of the building when Julia died.

There are sounds of crying. A piano is being played where there isn’t a piano. Is this Julia walking up the steps?

Richard Derrington’s unfussy direction lets the story evolve at its own pace. There is no interval. The plot twists surprise, the suspense is kept in check and there is time to chuckle. Three men make up the cast but Derrington gives Joe and Andy’s unseen wives a measurable importance.

Jim is an interesting study of an ordinary man. He is not typical but he is ordinary. Richard Stacey gives Andy an unease which is only gradually revealed as guilt. Ken, played by the resourceful Adrian McLoughlin, describes a key part of Julia’s life which neither of the other men knew about. He knew her as Julie.

Haunting Julia is a superbly crafted play and craftsmanship is the essence of this production.