The Studio, Edinburgh
Four stars
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but when an out of work actor is approached by a mysterious stranger to role play some dark past in Tim Foley’s play, the experience awakens subterranean forces that rise from the grave in a terrifying display of nocturnal psychic terrorism.
No, this ingenious bite size production by the Wigan based ThickSkin company isn’t a reboot of The Woman in Black or any of the other hammy horrors doing the rounds over the last few years. Rather, Neil Bettles’ production of Foley’s late night yarn is an altogether more up to date take on supernaturally inclined pulp fiction.
Our host Joe wears baggy jeans and works in a bar to make ends meet. His posh boy ex represents everything Joe hates in the cliquey theatre scene, so when even posher local David hires Joe to pretend to be a ghost to scare David’s nieces holed up in his country pile, it looks like a pretty lucrative gig. Once Joe gets on site, however, things start going bump in the night both indoors and out. Will Joe make it through his sleepless nightmares for the entire week? Who exactly is David? And who or what are the dark figures haunting Joe after dark?
These questions and more are eventually answered in Bettles’ production, which puts an array of jump scares, noises off and grotesque figures lunging from the shadows to the fore. The show is led by George Naylor as Joe, who greets us with an initial irreverence that suggests he doesn’t take the situation entirely seriously. Once Joe discovers the spectral truth behind his new job, however, the stakes are raised considerably higher.
Helped along by the on stage presence of Oliver Baines, Foley’s play takes an unexpected leap into the dark, where he points the finger at the mansion owning classes who in his world, at least, also appear to run the theatre industry. What evolves is a kind of mini class war that rails against the showbiz ghouls who leech off wannabes like Joe in order to survive.
Produced in association with the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, Joe’s fantastical memoir is ramped up by Joshua Pharo’s fusion of lighting and video projections. The action they illustrate is pulsed with a brooding intensity and occasional shock tactics by Pete Malkin’s beyond the grave soundscape. Combined, the show remains a thrilling addition to the stage horror bandwagon that refuses to lie down.
The Herald, October 13th 2026
ends
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