It Walks Around the House at Night review

The latest in a slew of spooky shows that includes 2:22 – A Ghost Story, Paranormal Activity and Kip Williams’ live cinematic take on Dracula, this touring chiller from Wigan-based company ThickSkin has most in common with loveably creaky The Woman in Black. Like that former West End stalwart, its plot features an actor hired to participate in ghostly goings-on and an eerie old house; and it flirts with metatheatricality. Written by Tim Foley and directed by Neil Bettles, it’s an old-fashioned kind of horror; despite its 21st-century setting and some business involving mobile phones, it relies on traditional jump scares, goosebump-inducing atmosphere and a hoary narrative device involving an inherited curse. It’s slickly designed and George Naylor, delivering what more or less amounts to a 90-minute monologue, performs it with twitchy, haggard intensity. But it’s too wispy to support Foley’s attempts to overlay it with weightier social themes, and although there are a few nifty illusions – significantly supported by Joshua Pharo’s lighting and video – many moments are much more likely to make you giggle than gasp.

Joe (Naylor) is an aspiring northern actor working an unglamorous bar job. When David, a plummy-voiced regular punter, offers him a gig impersonating a phantom for the entertainment of some visiting relatives at his country house, the hard-up Joe jumps at it. But, once installed in the mansion’s lodge with a fridge full of expensive food and the expectation of easy money, he discovers that there’s a catch: he’s been hired to circumnavigate the house in Victorian get-up every night, through some very creepy woods – and he quickly senses he’s not the only presence taking this nocturnal promenade.
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