“Show your audience sympathy,” Daniel MacPherson says in the opening scene of The Woman in Black , and judging by crowd-pleasing dramaturgical mantras, that’s no bad thing.
Minutes earlier, her co-star John Waters was alone on stage reading lines from a book. “It was 9.30am on Christmas Eve…” he mutters in a dry, monotonous and ill-conceived performance. A complete lack of charisma on a dull gray stage for a man who has appeared in everything from All Saints to Underbelly; until a guy in the row in front of me started making comments.
The predatory bookie is the Actor, played by MacPherson (The Bill, Neighbours, Dancing with the Stars), with slicked-back hair and a vaguely Victorian outfit. Compared to Waters, he’s confident, expressive, and perhaps a little too much of an actor, actually. When he bursts onto the stage, we learn that he’s been hired by Waters’ character, Arthur Kipps, to help tell his story — but man, does Kipps’ co-star have notes.
“It needs to be told,” Kipps says of his unforgettable experience, but as the Actor explains: How This is also said to be important. Sympathizing with viewers means meeting them halfway and giving them a reason to stay interested.
Adapted from Susan Hill’s 1983 novel, this fourth-wall-less opening features Hill’s self-conscious exploration of gothic horror tropes, furthering self-awareness. The late playwright Stephen Mallatrat weaves this ghost story into a ghost story through the Actor’s attempts to transform Kipps into the transformative force of theater and present his traumatic true story with the suspense it deserves.
This also explains why The Woman in Black was, until recently, a long-running West End staple (it closed after three decades in March 2023). It’s a solid, economical two-hander created by Mallatrat and original director Robin Herford as a “discount stocking stuffer” piece that sidesteps any practical or budgetary constraints for laughs while priming the audience for fear. ahead. It’s also packed with enough didactic lessons in old-school performing arts to ensure that even the most demanding midweek matinee sessions can be supplemented with a high school drama class or two.
The actor takes on the role of young Kipps, reprising the story of the young lawyer being sent to Eel Marsh House, a drearily secluded mansion—classic Bram Stoker territory filled with real estate paperwork. (Nightmarish indeed!) The reliable trappings of the genre continue: an unexpected overnight stay, a mysteriously locked door, an ominous creak, and a generous budget of dry ice to convey the ominous fog lingering over the swamps.
Waters and MacPherson illustrate their work by explaining how theater can become a happy, shared illusion through the combined power of light, sound, basic props, and the imagination of actors and audience. As the elder Kipps portrays the various supporting characters his younger self meets along the way, even he gets caught up in the theater bug — which mercifully allows Waters to stop pretending he can’t act.
When the play finally takes its stop-start turn from winking comedy to ghostfest, it comes without subtlety, thanks to some very loud jump scares that punctuate long periods of silence—which may be mainly drawing attention to how squeaky the seats at the Dunstan Playhouse are.
Relating to: The Woman in Black’s reign of terror
It’s a far cry from the cooler meta-adaptations of gothic classics currently taking the West End by storm, but for all the heavy shocks, it’s the simple image of an empty rocking chair and MacPherson wandering around a dark stage with shadows in hand. The fingertips are playful and scary. It’s effective enough for a listener nearby to shout out variations of the following phrases:Jesus Christ!” at least twice, and I also admit to being more attached to an imaginary dog than I expected. But still, I audibly gasped while watching The Secret Life of Pets.
The game’s longevity, widely touted in marketing, might lead some to assume it’s as dated as its quasi-Victorian setting, rather than a masterful late-’80s reworking of an early-’80s homage to some already well-worn ghost story clichés. As the play progresses, the set design and staging become apparent as having a bit more depth and a bit more style than the drab gray stage initially suggested, but we’re never quite caught up in the play, even as the heavily signposted final turn draws near. darkness.
For all its promise of terror, the result is a fun but ultimately safe night at the theater that leaves the audience sympathetically middle-of-the-road, even if it’s dark and foggy.
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The Woman in Black is at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide, until 26 May, then at His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth, from 30 May to 9 June; Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne, 13 June-6 July; Canberra Theater Centre, 9-14 July; Merrigong Theater Company, Wollongong, 17-21 July; City Theatre, Newcastle, 23-27 July; and Theater Royal, Sydney, 30 July-18 August.