Bringing to light the unexplained, Ghost Stories transfers to the West End.
A quick show of hands and it's revealed that half the audience believe in ghosts. The other half might consider themselves rationalists, cynics or a hardened breed of 'fraidy cat, but by the end of Ghost Stories they'll all agree that the team behind this show are very very clever.
For its theatricals Ghost Stories scores points for an unfailingly slick set design that occasionally leaves you thinking, “how the hell!?” What it lacks in storytelling panache it makes up for in astutely honing in on our universal fears. This is no spoof but it plays on our knowledge of urban legends, our familiarity with horror films and that frisson of impending doom you feel when you're in the house, alone at night, and you're sure something just moved.
The show's various taglines make some big claims, hyping our expectations of the drama. But the creative team behind this production are not so much interested in drama as they are in pulling the rug from beneath us – or, as writer Jeremy Dyson put it, leading the audience one way only to “sucker-punch them from the opposite direction”. They half pull this off.
The three directors, Andy Nyman, Jeremy Dyson and Sean Holmes, have crafted this show with the knowledge that each of us interprets events and feel fear via the dark goings on in our own heads. Professor Philip Goodman, played by Nyman, explains this as he gives his cynical, dark lecture on all things ghost-related and introduces us to the shuddery stories of his three characters. The team behind Ghost Stories have mastered the unexpected and manage to tap into our sense of dread. It's the whirlwind of possibilities in our own minds that spooks us out and amps up the shocks on stage, but it's the atmosphere that they've created that drives the trepidation.
Writers of The League of Gentlemen, Nyman and Dyson have the likes of Papa Lazarou and the legendary Tattsyrups under their belts, but the characters in Ghost Stories aren't as profoundly creepy as you might expect. Rather, they are all unsettlingly familiar. An 18 year old who lies to his parents, a professor with a back story he refuses to reveal, a security guard who minds his own business and a twat of a city slicker: all have paranormal stories that they want explained. At some point we've all known these people, and that brings the unexplained happenings closer to home.
It would be unfair to reveal exactly how this show scared the bejeesus out of me, but suffice it to say that, after a sluggish start, this show taunts its audience with the things they fears to see and, even worse, to hear.
Ghost Stories runs at Duke of York's Theatre and is currently booking until Novemebr 7th.
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