Inside Number 9 Stage Fright is the stage adaptation and spin off of the hit BBC anthology series starring Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. The duo, who are also known for Psychoville and The League of Gentlemen wrote the TV show for nine series which wrapped up in 2024.
Naturally, fans of the show were clamouring for more, and with news that there would be a stage version, and it would star both Shearsmith and Pemberton, it was a dream come true for fans of the show.
But, as any fan of the show will know, the stories created for the TV show are famous and sometimes infamous for their twists and turns. The stage play, titled Inside No. 9 Stage Fright is certainly no different in this regard, but I’m sure there are some out there who would like to delve deeper into the ending and understand the complexities of what happened in the show now they’ve seen it.
SPOILER WARNING
This will be the one and only spoiler warning I’ll give for the show. If you’re a fan of the TV show and you have not seen it on stage yet, I implore you to stop reading now.
For everyone else, let’s get into it.
Last chance to stop reading…
OK, here we go.
Like the TV Show, the Stage Show is an Anthology of Stories
Barring the Live episode, and the series nine finale, which both acknowledged Inside No 9 as a TV show and therefore broke the fourth wall, no episode of the TV show had recurring characters or storylines. Every episode is a self contained twenty-five minute story where we met the characters and told their entire story within the run time of one episode.
For anyone wondering how the stage show would work, it retains the anthology nature of the TV show. The show doesn’t feature just one story, and the cast play multiple characters throughout to explore around half a dozen separate storylines. In one sense, with the longer runtime of a full length play, it meant we effectively got to see an omnibus of a whole series worth of Inside No. 9 in one sitting.
Connective Tissue
Whilst every episode of Inside No. 9 is set within it’s own universe, there was always a few things which connected every episode together. These were the recurring cast of Shearsmith and Pemberton, their writing style that included dark themes, cheeky humour and lots of clever twists. The main connecting theme between every story is that the episodes would take place in some location that could be referred to as Number 9. This could be house number 9, dressing room 9, police car 9, train carriage 9 and such like.
The stage show continues all these connecting themes, but adds a couple more. The main one which I’ll discuss for now is that there is a lamp seen throughout the various stories that is mean to calm and appease ghosts within the theatre. The show is called Stage Fright, and whilst that is a play on words to do with the idea of actors being afraid to perform on stage, the bigger meaning in the context of the show is that there is a recurring theme of ghosts throughout.
We’re first introduced to the lamp that stands towards the back of the stage during the second segment of the show where Reece and Steve appear as themselves and discuss ghostly rumours in the theatre and certain superstitions.
Whilst highly unusual for anything to reoccur in the TV show in the way this lamp does, in the context of the stage show, it makes perfect sense and is the way for what may be otherwise disconnected scenes to be relevant to one another.
The Biggest Spoiler
The biggest reveal and twist at the end of the show comes when they announce that Reece Shearsmith passed away during the course of rehearsals for the show. This is a very cleverly executed moment in the show, and is a payoff that they had been building to the entire show.
Of course, Shearsmith isn’t really dead, but they do give a number of clues to it throughout.
This twist comes at the end of second act when we see Shearsmith’s creepy director character that he had been playing throughout the second act get murdered by another character who is an usherette who had colluded with him to scare away an actress who was performing in the show he was directing. The usherette snaps Shearsmith’s neck and he falls to the ground.
Then, in a great piece of misdirection, as he’s still laying there, the usherette picks up a camera that has a live feed to a projection on the stage and we see a ghostly face to end the show. Whilst this is happening Shearsmith is still laying there, and we snap to a blackout.
When the lights come back on Shearsmith is seemingly still laying there and the other actors from Stage Fright all come back onto stage to take their bows. With Shearsmith still laying where he was on the stage, Steve Pemberton helps Reece to his feet only for us to see that the person being helped up isn’t in fact Reece Shearsmith at all, but is a different actor.
This creates a moment of confusion before Pemberton reveals that this new actor is in fact Shearsmith’s understudy and that Reece Shearsmith (as we all know) had passed away during rehearsals of Inside No. 9 Stage Fright.
The big twist of the show is that Shearsmith was dead the entire time, and that we were all just so convinced by Toby’s performance that we believed that we were watching Shearsmith the entire time.
But with a twist like this, we should go back over the events of the show to see where they laid groundwork for this, and how they pulled it off.
When Stage Fright begins, the opening of the show gives us a segment where we see characters sat in an audience watching a Shakespeare play being performed. They literally have a few rows of theatre seating on the stage, and throughout this segment we see loud audience members disrupt Shearsmith’s character from watching the play to the point that he kills the other audience members in a fit of rage.
When the curtain actually opened to start the show, we actually see a different actor in the same seat to where Shearsmith would come and sit, and what no one watching Stage Fright for the first time would realise is that the character who gets up and Shearsmith who returns are meant to be the same character.
The swap is done in plain sight of the audience, but may happen during a moment when our attention is drawn to two other characters who are a very old man and his overbearing daughter.
The idea of this swap is that when Stage Fright begins we see an actor who is later identified as Toby, and that Toby does such a good job of filling in for Reece Shearsmith that we truly believe that it was Shearsmith the whole time.
This is hinted at with a big clue that comes during the latter stages of act 2 when Pemberton appears to break character. He tells a widely reported story about the actor Daniel Day Lewis who once played Hamlet and was so in character on stage that he believed he saw the ghost of his father on stage just as his character Hamlet saw the ghost of his father in Shakespear’s play. Whilst recounting this story, Pemberton seems distracted and then quickly leaves the stage in a slightly odd moment.
A big clue that this moment was of significance is how Pemberton even reduces his speaking volume to be less projected as an actor performing in a theatre would and speaks in a more every day level. This was really meant to be Steve as Steve believing that he could see Shearsmith on stage.
Naturally, anything that happens in Inside No. 9 is done with purpose, and this brings us back to the ending of the show with Pemberton “out of character” (but in reality still part of the show) apologising that in that moment he believed that he had seen Reece Shearsmith on stage with him despite him being dead.
The idea here is that like Pemberton saying he felt he was seeing Shearsmith on stage the whole time, that everyone in the audience watching Stage Fright had also been convinced by Toby’s performance that we were in fact watching Shearsmith as well.
Pemberton then goes on to praise Shearsmith’s understudy, who is an actor called Toby, who had been filling in for the deceased Shearsmith the entire show. To further highlight that we had all been watching Toby instead of Shearsmith the entire time, Pemberton references a mistake that Toby is supposed to have made during the performance, and Toby then acknowledges the mistake by repeating the name ‘rubix clube’ which was a mispronunciation of rubix cube that Shearsmith had made earlier during the show. This is course was quite clever as it revealed that the mistake pronunciation from Shearsmith earlier wasn’t in fact a mistake at all, and was inserted to be a dot connected with the later reveal of Toby.
Speaking of rubix clube, this is where the next layer of the cleverness comes from. Not only because this line hinted towards the usually impeccable Shearsmith making a mistake was a clue that it wasn’t really him. Or the fact that a rubix cube is a puzzle where all the pieces are joined together with a twist, much like the show Inside No 9 Stage Fright does. Or that the mispronunciation rubix clube includes the word ‘clue’.
No, the biggest clue to what was really going on in the show comes from the segment the rubix clube clue came in. The use of the Cheese and Crackers story from the TV show version of Inside No. 9 is perhaps the biggest indicator to what was really happening within Stage Fright and that they were foreshadowing that Shearsmith was in fact dead the whole show.
A big segment of Act 1 was a near word for word recreation of the TV episode Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room. When this first started I believed that the inclusion was just a sign that Stage Fright would just be a mix of new material combined with them playing some of the old hits, and whilst this is true, the inclusion of this TV episode of Inside No. 9 actually held much more significance.
Spoiler warning for anyone who hasn’t seen that episode of the TV show, but if you have seen Stage Fright, you’ll know exactly what happens anyway. The episode featured a washed up 1980’s variety double act called Cheese and Crackers who had one series on TV before their career’s went down hill. The story is about them reuniting some thirty years later to discuss performing a one off reunion show. Of the two there is Tommy, played by Shearsmith who has moved on with his life and is now a business man, and Len, played by Pemberton who is still a struggling actor who is trying to hold onto past glories.
The twist of the episode comes at the end when you realise that their entire interaction throughout the episode is something of a walk down memory lane for Tommy, and that Len hasn’t really been there because he is dead.
The fact that this would turn out to be the only episode they recreated on a one to one scale should have been a big clue that it’s inclusion was for a more profound reason. The fact that Len was dead the entire story perfectly foreshadows that it will then turn out that one of Pemberton and Shearsmith turns out to be dead for the entire show.
End on a Song
The reuse of Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room was also perfect for the show because when creating a stage adaptation of Inside No. 9, it is the only episode that featured an original musical number that would translate perfectly for stage.
After it’s revealed that Shearsmith has been dead the entire show, the rest of the cast, headed up by Pemberton and Toby take their bows and the curtain closes, but when this happens it is very obvious that the show isn’t in fact over yet. We then continue to hear Pemberton behind the scenes and see a projection to highlight that a stage light falls from the rafters and lands on Pemberton’s head and kills him.
The curtain opens again and both Pemberton laying on the ground and the returning Shearsmith are wearing white. This is to be symbolic that they are now angels. They discuss how they are both dead, and make a joke about the cliché ending of someone being dead the whole time and others not realising that they were a ghost is something that has been overdone.
Pemberton reveals that he wanted to the show to go on and he believed that is what Shearsmith would have also wanted. Shearsmith reveals that that wouldn’t have been what he would have wanted, but they put in a joke where Pemberton reveals that they had to go ahead with the show because they had already printed the programmes.
Shearsmith then complains that the show didn’t fully go on as they had planned as the ending of the Cheese and Crackers segment had omitted the song that the episode had usually ended with. Pemberton explains that it didn’t feel right to do this without Shearsmith, but they then proceed to do it as the closing of Stage Fright.
With both Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton now dead, the song takes on new meaning as they sing ‘If You’re Going to Cry, Cry Tears of Laughter’ and the other cast members join them on stage dressed as angels.
One Final Twist
With every story of Inside No. 9 being set in a location that is numbered nine, the fact that the main stars of the show are dead, and doing a song and dance routine in heaven surrounded by angels on clouds, the show is revealed to be set on the well known concept of Cloud Number Nine.
What Else? A Play Within a Play
One of the recurring themes of Inside No. 9 Stage Fight was the concept of a play within a play.
The opening segment of the show was about audience members watching a Shakespeare play. Even though we didn’t see the play they were watching, we did hear it at times, and so this production (which I forget if it was Macbeth or Hamlet) was therefore a play within a play within a play.
We are also introduced to Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, seemingly out of character, so they were playing fictionalised versions of themselves.
In the segment of the show based on the episode Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room the layers of inception go even deeper. During the course of this story we see various sketches being performed by the comedy duo Cheese and Crackers. The main one of these is in fact a wholly separate segment of the overall Stage Fright Show.
During the Cheese and Crackers scene, we segue to a scene based partially on the episode A Quiet Night In (more on that soon) about hapless criminals who kidnap a celebrity. The idea in the Cheese and Crackers scene is that the kidnap scene is a new sketch written by Len that Tommy is reading.
The kidnapping scene is therefore a scene within a scene. When you then consider that the ending of the show has Reece and Steve directly referencing them performing the parts of Tommy and Len it makes the kidnapping scene a play within a play within a play. When you consider that Reece and Steve are playing fictionalised versions of themselves it actually the kidnapping scene a play within a play within a play within a play!
These repeated plays within plays act as a big clue to how the second act overall is presented. The second act opens with the story set in an asylum, and this lasts for a decent length of time and multiple scenes before we learn that this is another play within a play. This is revealed when an usherette walks onto the stage and interrupts what it turns out was just a rehearsal of a play. The show then continues with the cast playing the actors who were playing the characters in the play set in the asylum.
Improvised or Not Improvised
The kidnapping scene is, I believe is meant to be a prequel of sorts to the episode A Quiet Night In. You don’t need to know the original episode to understand what happens in the stage show, but the idea is the hapless criminals Eddie and Ray are on a kidnap mission before we later see them in the TV story where they have to attempt to steal a painting.
Inside No. 9 is known for doing something different in pretty much every episode. This has included episodes being spoken in Shakesperian verse, a episode being shot entirely from a CCTV camera and one episode being broadcast live…or at least allegedly/partially live.
The stage show is no different in their pushing a boundary and giving themselves a different kind of challenge as it seems that every show has a different guest star. In the performance I saw it was comedian Dara O’Brien, and the way the guest star is introduced is with a bag over their head as if the kidnappers have inadvertently kidnapped the wrong person.
What happens after this is presented in such a way that my belief is that they wanted you to come to the conclusion that the celebrity guest has no idea what they’re meant to do in the show. This could well be true, but my suspicion is that even if they don’t know exactly what is going to happen and they’ve never rehearsed, I think they are clued up somewhat with some idea of what is expected of them.
Of course, they don’t go as far as to say that the following segment of the show is semi or fully improvised, but it’s implied with how Shearsmith and Pemberton seem to cue the guest on what to say and do.
I’m prepared to hear otherwise in terms of how the guest performer is approached, but based on what I saw I believe it’s semi improvised at best. Even if never rehearsed, I’m sure there was some aspects of what happened that would require the guest star to know certain story beats, if not knowing exactly what to say or do at any point.
How did they Achieve the Ghost Backstage
The last aspect of the show I’ll delve into to explore and explain is the ghostly appearances in the second act. The first half of the second act introduces us to the play within the play set in an asylum. This is later revealed to be a play and we continue to see the characters who are the actors playing them. Reece Shearsmith plays the director of the play, who is also acting in it. Steve Pemberton meanwhile plays an actor who doesn’t approve of some of the director’s more modern approaches to theatre.
Shearsmith’s director introduces us to one scene that will feature live projection during the stage show. To achieve this a camera is introduced on stage, and from this point on we see a projection of what the camera is capturing as it is being operated on stage. This is something I’ve seen done in West End level shows a few times, with Bat Out of Hell instantly coming to mind as a show where live projection was heavily used throughout.
In Inside No. 9 Stage Fright, the use of live projection is used initially as part of the asylum scene, and they are very definite in their making sure you can tell that what you are seeing is in fact live, and at times you can even see the front rows of the audience in the background on the projection.
The next scene of the show shows us the Usherette character helping the leading actress from the Asylum play segment to record a self tape audition. The usherette holds the camera and records the leading actress as she performs. As this is happening we can suddenly see movement backstage into the wings of the theatre. This is cleverly done as filming into the wings obviously gives the audience in the theatre a view that they otherwise wouldn’t ever have.
We then geta couple of sequences where we see characters walk into the wings and its teased that ghostly goings on are happening. During the proceedings the lights all seem to go out and to be able to see what is happening backstage, the actress picks up the camera and uses the night vision capability of the camera to see backstage. Of course, for us, the audience, we are now able to see a first person view of what the actress sees when she goes backstage. This leads us to a shocking moment where we see a ghost appear on the projection and then vanishes again.
So, how was this achieved? It was done with an old trick which is very effective for films which appear to be one long continuous shot. As the camera was led into the wings there was a brief moment where the camera pushed right into the curtain and this gives a moment where nothing came be seen but darkness. During this moment the camera feed is switched over from a live shot to a pre-recorded shot and this allows them to add in any editing and computer graphics with it seeming like it’s happened on a live shot.
They then simply reverse this on the way back so that they switched from a pre-recorded shot to a live one for it to come back onto stage.
At the every ending of this story we see the usherette character kill Reece Shearsmith’s director character before picking up the camera and turning it to her own face and revealing one final shocking moment as her face is shown to be a horrifying ghost. This of course was another pre-recorded moment presented as a live video, but in this instance everyone would be able to tell that it was pre-recorded.
So there you are! Without going on an don into even more fine details, these are al the biggest plot points and questions that people may want explained from Inside No. 9 Stage Fright. Again, I’ll end by reminding everyone that a huge part of the fun for the show is to see and experience it live, so please avoid spoiling it for others.
If you are interested in taking a deep dive into other stage shows please check out others in our Endings Explained series including 2:22 A Ghost Story and Room 13. You can also see our deep dive articles explaining the differences between the stage and film versions of the likes of Back to the Future the Musical, The Bodyguard and Mrs Doubtfire.
