It is a new year and a new season at Darlington Hippodrome. There are scary ghost stories to be told with Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black taking to the stage this week. It is a welcome return to drama after the frivolity of pantomimes up and down the region.
Invited| Review by Stephen Stokoe
As the audience enters the auditorium, they are welcomed into – well – an auditorium. The stage is set like a stage but with various items covered with protective cloth. There are costume rails and various items of props and furniture. This leads into an opening scene in which we are introduced to Arthur Kipps (Jon Mackay) – the main character of the play who, having experienced the haunting events of some years previous, is keen for his story to be told.
To facilitate this, he enlists the help of an actor and director named in the programme as ‘The Actor’ and played by Daniel Burke. The programme also suggests that the events of the play happened in “this theatre in the early 1950’s.” This gentle start to the play serves to put the audience at their ease. The comical and ineffectual way in which Kipps attempts to recite his rambling story along with the growing frustration of his theatrical mentor encourages laughter. This, however, lulls the audience into a false sense of security and the tale gradually becomes darker and more urgent as the story unfolds. Not all is as it seems which is the maintheme of the Susan Hill novel of 1983.
Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation introduces the character of the actor very cleverly to allow this cast of 2 (+one other) to explore all the main characters of the original story and these two actors work extremely hard to tell this ghost story to very good effect indeed. Mackay in particular shows his obvious ear for dialects as he effortlessly switches from regional accent to regional accent – on one occasion in mid sentence. Burke also has to show all of his Oxford School of Drama training as he takes on the character of his opposite number during the first act of the play. This may sound a little confusing at first. This is the case early in the play as actor and characters swap, change and merge but as the play settles into its stride and the tone changes, it becomes much more understandable.
There are some light hearted moments from Mallatratt’s script which serve to suggest some of the limitations of bringing such a story to the stage with a cast of two (+one other) with Kipps incredulous assertion that the story has, among many other things, a cart and trap and a dog in it. The actor dismisses these concerns by suggesting that the audience is perfectly capable of suspending disbelief and will imagine anything if given a suggestion of those items.
There is another ‘character’ who features throughout the piece and that is the unseen but hard working technical manager who operates the lights and plays various sound effects during what is essentially a rehearsal of the final production. This works very effectively in the context of the play but also to allude to theatrical practices used by theatres at the time to bring gothic tales of ghosts from days gone by. In another way it also gives reviewers a convenient segue to name check some of the technicians involved in this production for a job incredibly well done.
The whole design of the production by Michael Holt is very clever indeed. The set is deceptively shallow. The coverings are used to magnificent effect by the lighting designer Kevin Sleep who with theatrical trickery takes the audience into several different rooms of the ghostly mansion on the deserted peninsular which is cut off from the real world and reality twice a day. The sound designed by Sebastian Frost based on a plot originally by Ron Mead is a masterclass in technical theatre. There are a number of cues that must be hit with meticulous accuracy and they were this evening causing, on one occasion in the first half, the audience to gasp in shock and subsequent amusement. The direction by Robin Herford has to be pinpoint too as the actors must be on their marks (or entirely absent in a couple of cases) for some of the action to be at its most effective.
This stage adaptation does not take itself too seriously. As the two hour running time travels by like a pony and trap, the ghostly horror of the original text hits home and there is a very satisfactory yet discomforting conclusion to the story. This gives the audience pause for thought as they applaud and congratulate the performances of two fine and hard working actors for a job extremely well done. There is also deserved acknowledgement for the (+ one other) as the two principal performers leave the stage.
New year is the time for scary ghost stories and tales at the glorious Darlington Hippodrome this January and there are a number of jump scares in this production to keep the audience on the edge of their seats during a thoroughly absorbing and spectralproduction.