OK, so you’ve just seen The Woman in Black performed on stage, but have questions about it’s ending? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.
For clarity, this article is about the stage version of The Woman in Black and not about the ending of the film version of the story, which although similar in ways, is different.
And SPOILER WARNING almost goes without saying, as this is explaining the ending after all.
SPOILER WARNING
The play features only three cast members, but between them, there are many more roles played.
The main character is Arthur Kipps, who when the play begins, is an old man who intends to tell his tale of his interaction with ‘the woman in black’ as a reading to select audience. Kipps has enlisted the assistance of a young male actor to advise him on his presentation of the story, and the actor soon convinces Kipps to present the tale in a more dramatized way.
From here the show jumps back and forth between showing Mr Kipps and the actor working on the rehearsal of the story as something of a play, and flashbacks of the actual story of when Mr Kipps met the woman in black. These flashbacks are therefore just the actor and Mr Kipps acting out what happened in the past, and aren’t actual flashbacks.
In the telling of what happened in the past, the young male actor plays a young version of Mr Kipps, and Mr Kipps then plays many other parts. This sounds complicated on paper, but makes sense when you watch the show.
Old Mr Kipps plays almost every other part in the story other than himself, but there are a few exceptions. These are that they mime the presence of a dog and the presence of a horse. Lastly, there is the role of the Woman in Black herself. As you are watching the show, she shows up at various points and is played by a woman who mostly hides in the shadows, wears all black, including a black veil over her face and occasionally reveals her pale face with a scary expression. As you’re watching the show this role is played by a woman who is the third and final actor in The Woman in Black, along with the performers playing old Mr Kipps and the young male actor.
After the first appearances of the woman in black, and when we are in the present of the rehearsal phase of the show, the young male actor acknowledges to old Mr Kipps that he was impressed with ‘the surprise’. This surprise is brushed over, but is vital to the ending of the play.
As the flashbacks continue, we learn more about the nature of the woman in black, and that it has become legend that after she appears to someone that a young child will die in the days that follow.
Her backstory is that she is a woman called Jennet Humfrye, and was the sister of a woman called Mrs Drablow, who owned the estate that Mr Kipps is sent to oversee upon Mr Drablow’s death. It is revealed that Jennet, aka the woman in black, was unmarried with a child, and in that day and age this was unacceptable in society. As such, her son was sent to live with her married sister and raised by her.
A tragedy befell the boy who died in an accident, and this send Jennet insane with grief. When she later died, she started appearing to people as the ghostly and grief-stricken woman in black.
Whoever the ghost of the woman in black appears to, is then cursed to lose a child and suffer the same tragedy as she did.
Mr Kipps reveals that long after he worked on Mrs Drablow’s estate, he was married and had a son, and one day suddenly saw a vision of the woman in black, and then his son died in an accident. This meant that the curse had followed him.
Once the young male actor and Mr Kipps are finished the rehearsal where they go through the story, the young male actor once again brings up the idea of Mr Kipp’s surprise during the rehearsal. This is where it is revealed that the two were talking at crossed purposes about the surprise.
For old Mr Kipps, he thought the surprise the actor was speaking of was that old Mr Kipps had learned his lines. At the start of the show, Mr Kipps had appeared as anything but an accomplished actor, and he felt that by learning his lines, he had pleasantly surprised the young actor.
When this is explained by Mr Kipps, the actor says that was not what he meant by the surprise. From the young male actor’s perspective, he had felt surprised by Mr Kipps, who he had assumed had hired an actress to come to the rehearsal to play The Woman in Black herself. When this is said, it is revealed that Mr Kipps had hired no such actress to play the Woman in Black and as far as he was concerned, the rehearsal had only featured the young male actor and himself.
This confuses the young male actor who reveals that throughout the rehearsal he had seen The Woman in Black.
The play ends at this point with the implication being that the young male actor, who himself had mentioned having a wife and a child, would now be cursed with the same fate of losing their child.
It’s an effective ending, but does leave one question that will slightly ruin the fun and effectiveness of the show. And that is the question of why, if the Woman in Black that we had been seeing the whole time was in fact a real ghost, and not an actress playing the part in Mr Kipps story, why would she take part in the storytelling?
I’ll leave that one with you, and do make sure you check out all the other theatre articles on the XStreamed.tv site including a full review of the Woman in Black play.
You can get loads more Theatre reviews and articles on the Theatre section of the site, and don’t forget to check out the Geek Battle Podcast on the Geek Battle YouTube Channel
