by “Have sympathy for your audience,” says Daniel MacPherson in the opening scene of The Woman in Black and, as far as crowd-pleasing drama mantras go, it’s not a bad thing.
Moments earlier, his co-star John Waters was alone on stage reading lines straight out of a book. “It was 9.30 on Christmas Eve …” he claims, in a performance that is dry, monotonous and not predictable enough to begin with. For a man who has starred in everything from All Saints to Underbelly, he’s a charisma vacuum on a dull gray stage – right up until a guy in a row in front of me starts heckling.
The actor is the disruptive punter, played by MacPherson (The Bill, Neighbours, Dancing with the Stars) with a slit back and a vaguely Victorian outfit. Compared to Waters he is confident, expressive and perhaps a bit much – an actor, basically. As he approaches the stage, we learn that he’s hired Waters’ character Arthur Kipps to tell his story – but boy, does Kipps’ co-star have notes.
“It has to be told,” Kipps says of his harrowing experience but, as the Actor explains, how is also said to be important. Empathy with the audience is about meeting them halfway – and giving them a reason to be interested.
Based on Susan Hill’s 1983 novel, this fourth opener without a wall gives Hill another self-aware twist on the familiar exploration of gothic horror tropes. The late playwright Stephen Mallatrat embeds this ghost story within a ghost story by converting Actor Kipps’ efforts to the transformative power of theatre, and delivering his truly traumatic story with the suspense it deserves.
This also explains how The Woman in Black was, until recently, a long-term West End staple (it closes in March 2023 after three decades). A tight, economical two-and-a-bit hander, created by Mallatrat and original director Robin Herford as a “short-priced stock filler” piece that wished its practical or budgetary constraints for laughs and stunned the audience with frights. before us. It’s also packed with enough didactic lessons about old-school stagecraft to ensure that even the toughest midweek matinee sessions can be filled out with a high school drama class or two.
The actor takes on the role of the young Kipps, recreating the young solicitor’s account of being sent to the gloomy and lonely Eel Marsh House – the classic Bram Stoker ending, right down to the mountain of real estate paperwork. (The real stuff of nightmares!) The genre’s reliable tropes continue: an unexpected overnight stay, a mysterious locked door, some ominous creaking and a generous dry ice budget to convey the ominous fog that lingers over the marshes.
Waters and MacPherson show their work, explaining how theatre, through light, sound, basic props and the combined power of imagination of actors and audience, can be a happy shared attraction. With the older Kipps portraying the various supporting characters his younger self meets along the way, he even gets possessed by the theater bug – mercifully allowing Waters to stop acting like he’s not he can act.
When the play finally stops from comedy to spook-fest it arrives without subtlety, courtesy of some very loud jump scares that punctuate long periods of silence – which mainly draws attention to how creaky the seats are in the Dunstan Playhouse. Can be.
Related: The Woman in Black reign of terror
It’s a far cry from some of the more over-the-top meta-adaptations of the Gothic classics that are taking the West End by storm at the moment but, for all the heavy disturbances, a simple image of an empty chair, and MacPherson walking around a dark stage throwing shadows with his. fingertips, spooky spooky. It is quite effective for one member of the audience next to me variations of “Jesus Christ!” at least twice, and I also admit that I was more invested in a certain imaginary dog than I expected. But then again, I cringed audibly while watching The Secret Life of Pets.
The play’s longevity, which has been widely trumpeted in the marketing, might lead people to assume it’s as old as the near-Victorian setting, rather than a late-80s-like re-tooling of some ghostly clichés. well spent already. As the play goes on, the set design and staging reveal a little more depth and style than initially suggested, even as the big-signal finale draws near. , we are not left in the game. dark
Because of all the terror, the result is an entertaining but ultimately a night at the theater that leaves its audience sympathetically in the middle of the road – even if it is a dark, foggy night.
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The Woman in Black is at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide, until 26 May, then Her Majesty’s Theatre, Perth, 30 May-9 June; Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne, 13 June-6 July; Canberra Theater Centre, July 9-14; Merrigong Theater Company, Wollongong, 17-21 July; Civic Theatre, Newcastle, 23-27 July; and Theater Royal, Sydney, 30 July-18 August.
