The Stage

The Woman in Black

Published Friday 15 January 2010 at 14:00 by John Thaxter

They say most old theatres have a ghost that walks on Friday nights looking for a long-forgotten manager who reneged on the wages. Entering a darkened empty playhouse, one may sense spectral presences lurking beyond the proscenium arch, but theatre is such a physical medium that stage spooks rarely match the chill of unseen apparitions in novels.

Peter Bramhill and Robert Demeger in The Woman in Black at Richmond Theatre Photo: Robert Day

Not so Stephen Mallatratt’s classic adaptation of the Susan Hill ghost story, which cleverly undermines our resistance by giving her tale a wholly theatrical framework to distance us from the narrative, allowing unsettling horrors to creep up almost unnoticed.

Robin Herford’s Scarborough production, a brilliant stage contrivance carried out with technical and dramatic panache, transferred to the West End in 1989 and has run non-stop ever since, an achievement celebrated with this 21st birthday tour to the top 24 UK venues.

Robert Demeger plays the Victorian solicitor who books a theatre so he can read his family and friends an account of his supernatural experiences in a haunted house when, as a trainee lawyer, he was sent to sort out a dead woman’s papers.

To help him exorcise his demons, he also hires a brash young actor, played by Peter Bramhill, as a voice coach and soon the two are turning the mundane recital into an enthralling piece of melodrama, complete with shrieks, shadowy silhouettes, tricks with lights and slamming doors.

Herford has reassembled his acclaimed technical team and is well served by three strongly focused performances. But at the Richmond press night, an attentive, highly suggestible audience of several hundred fifth and sixth-formers added its own thrilled reaction to each and every creepy moment, with shocked gasps and screams of terror that made this an unforgettable night in the theatre for actors and fellow watchers alike.