Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Four stars
Old ghosts are everywhere in this latest tour of the late Stephen Mallatratt’s ingenious staging of Susan Hill’s best selling 1983 gothic horror novel, in which an ageing solicitor called Arthur Kipps attempts to lay those ghosts to rest. He does this by telling his story of what happened years before after he was dispatched to a marshy godforsaken landscape to sort out a deceased recluse’s affairs. Here, the spectral figure of the woman who gives the show its title haunts the town into submission, with portents of doom at her every fleeting appearance, as Kipps learns to his cost.
Back in 1987, Mallatratt took Hill’s already spooky yarn and set it in an empty theatre, where Kipps has hired a young actor to play out his past in an attempt to exorcise his demons. Originally intended as a low key entertainment performed in the theatre bar, in director Robin Herford’s hands, Mallatratt’s creation took on a life of its own, and up until its closure in 2023 was the second longest running show on the West End.
Judging by the Glasgow leg of its latest tour, there’s still plenty of life there yet, as John Mackay as Kipps and Daniel Burke s the Actor unleash every trick in the book to tell their tale. The power of the imagination, suspension of disbelief and a willingness to look into the dark are the drive behind Mallatratt and Herford’s show, which reaches for the theatrical extremities of an old school hammy horror and comes out screaming.
This is brought to flesh and blood life not just by it’s setting, replicated with old curtains and a dressing up box by Michael Holt’s design. Nor is it just down to the exquisite acting by both performers, with Mackay’s Kipps embodying a multitude of dour town folk while Burke’s Actor puts the younger Kipps centre stage. Kevin Sleep’s lighting moves between sepia tinted mood lighting and a stark minimalism punctuated by blackouts that heighten the otherworldly rush of Rod Mead and Sebastian Frost’s sound design.
Hill’s story itself taps into the Victorian Values of a small town riddled with secrets where morality turns into repression, and ends up damaging everyone, more often than not to death. Combined with the staging, this makes for an at times genuinely terrifying experience.
This is brought home even more by the possibly intangible presence of the shadowy figure who is the cause of all ills. After thirty-eight years kept in the dark, the collected graduates of such monstrous acts could probably have a convention. Of course, it could all be a trick of the light in a show that refuses to lie down.
The Herald, January 23rd 2025
Ends
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