The long running and fan favourite gothic horror show is currently on tour in the UK, and I was able to catch it at its performance at The Oxford Playhouse.
The show is based on the 1983 novel of the same name by author Susan Hill, and is one of the most famous examples of horror theatre ever produced. This was actually my second time seeing the show, as I had previously seen the show during it’s lengthy run in the West End where it was one of the longest running stage plays in history with over 13,000 performances before it closed to go on tour.
When I had previously seen it several years back, I was sat right at the very back in the upper circle, and truthfully from there, the show didn’t live up to the promise of the scares and tension that it had become known for.
For this viewing, we were sat in the very front row, and this made for an entirely different experience. Add to this there for this particular viewing, there were about four coaches worth of teenagers watching it on school trips and they were literally screaming at every jump scare in the show. Normally I would have viewed screaming kids in a theatre as a negative, but the sudden bursts of surround sound screaming did actually add to the horror.
The show itself is about a character called Mr Kipps, and his retelling of his experiences with ‘The Woman in Black’ who is a ghost he encountered when working on settling the estate of an elderly widow called Mrs Drablow.
Rather than the show just show the events of Mr Kipps meeting the ghost, it has a narrative framing whereby the story is told by a much older version of Mr Kipps, played by a different actor, who enlists the help of a young male actor who then plays a young Mr Kipps in the flashbacks of the story.
Along the way you see the two interacting in the modern day (or at least modern for when Mr Kipps is older) and they discuss how the retelling of the story will be performed.
I’ll avoid major spoilers for how the play ends and its big revelations along the way, but if you want that, you should check out my The Woman in Black Ending Explained article in the theatre section on this website.
The show initially looks light in it’s set and production values, with drab gauzes across the stage, and limited set and props which include a doorway, a big basket and a clothing rail with a few items on. As the show progresses, you see this is expanded on, and they make great use of what little there is. They also make great use of lighting and smoke effects to create a tense atmosphere.
The cast only features three actors. In the performance that we saw it was John Mackay as Mr Kipps and Daniel Burke as The Actor. The titular character of the Woman in Black was played by an actress who goes uncredited on the website of the show…but yeah she was good in her role.
I did enjoy all the performances, and felt I recognised John Mackay from something. Having looked him up, I saw that he’d been in a recent episode of Doctor Who that I’d seen so that is cool.
I did enjoy the energy and likeability that Daniel Burke brought to the role of the Actor but also noticed that he had a continual habit of nodding his head reassuringly on loads of lines. Maybe it’s just because I was in the front row but couldn’t help but be distracted by it in the end like it was a drinking game to see how many times he nodded. This feels like a weird thing to point out from an otherwise great performance, but hey, it happened enough that it became a thing.
John Mackay did a good job of playing all the multiple roles, and both actors gave a great sense of the invisible dog that appears in the show. Or mimed dog, I should say. There isn’t an invisible dog in the same sense that Susan Storm is the Invisible Girl in Fantastic Four.
If you get the chance to see the show, I’d recommend sitting as close to the front as you can, so you can get the full effect of the ghostly encounters. There aren’t actually tons of them, but lots of red herrings long the way.
The story is good, but it is one you have to pay close attention to, as with its flashback style framing, and one actor playing multiple roles, you do have to do a little more work to keep track of things than you do with many other shows.
Conclusion
For a long time, The Woman in Black held the title of show that was high on my to see list, but never the top priority. Having seen it a few years back, it slightly underwhelmed, but having now seen this current tour and being sat up close to the action, I felt it was well worth it. The story and design are solid, and the performances are well handled. I’m not sure if the show has evolved much over the years since it was first staged, but think it was probably a ghostly spectacle unlike much else that had come before it when it debuted. These days I feel like it’s bag of tricks is competent, but probably could have some more ghostly flair to wow me compared to other shows.
As it is, for what it is, The Woman in Black was a fun and engaging ghost story, that if you haven’t seen it before, it’s well worth checking out.
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