THE WOMAN IN BLACK. Tour.

Tour.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK: Adapted by Stephen Mallatratt.
Reviewed at: Theatre Royal: Tkts 0115 989 5555 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk.
Runs: 1h 55m: one interval: till 1st Nov then touring.
Performance times: 7.30pm, matinees 2.00pm Wed and 2.30pm Sat.
Audio Described: 2.00pm performance Weds.
Review: Alan Geary: 27 October 2008.

Genuine fright - goose pimples, bristling hair, and so on.
At one point during this play at least two people in the press-night audience - me and my partner - experienced your genuine old-fashioned fright - goose pimples, bristling hair, and so on. It’s a ghost story and a thriller, deliberately clichéd and deliberately echoic of Wilkie Collins, Dickens, Wells, and others.

Originally a novel by Susan Hill, this is an ingenious adaptation from the late Stephen Mallatratt.

Young solicitor, Kipps (Sean Baker), has to visit an isolated house on the north-east coast to examine the papers of a recently deceased old lady who lived alone. There he encounters ghostly phenomena which change his life. But in this stage version there’s an added level: Kipps as an older man, in the hope of coming to terms with tragedy, recounts his story to a younger man, an actor (Ben Porter), who thus becomes caught up in the wider story.

Since it’s a suspense-laden thriller, enough said.

Both performers - it’s a two-hander - are utterly compelling. They’re physically very similar, which helps because Porter has to pretend to be Kipps as a young man. The period is, intentionally vaguely, early twentieth-century and, in his formal solicitor’s garb, Sean Baker looks remarkably like all those pictures of Neville Chamberlain.

Sound and special effects, to some extent tongue-in-cheek, are exhilarating, as is the miming from both Baker and Porter.

The whole thing’s set on a theatre stage, in this case of course that of the Theatre Royal, so along with its other elements, we’re given fascinating analyses of what it is to tell a story and the nature of theatre itself.

This is intelligent entertainment.

Arthur Kipps: Sean Baker.
The Actor: Ben Porter.

Director: Robin Herford.
Designer: Michael Holt.
Lighting Designer: Kevin Sleep.
Sound Designer: Ron Mead.
Original Sound Design: Jackie Staines.

2008-10-28 19:19:04