By Martin Brisland.
Many will know that The Mousetrap is our longest running West End play having started in 1952, but do you know the second longest?
It is Susan Hill’s 1983 Gothic horror novel The Woman in Black which Hill has acknowledged was inspired by The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
From 1989, The Woman in Black played a record-breaking run in the West End, with 13,232 performances at the Fortune Theatre before ending in 2023. It has been seen by over seven million people in the UK and is a classic English ghost story.
Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s best-selling novel is set in 1951 and tells of a lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes had been cast over his family by the spectre of a mysterious Woman in Black years before. A local story says that a sighting of the woman warned of the death of a child. The plot is tragic, but it is also a very believable and human story about loss.
It stars John Mackay as Arthur Kipps and Daniel Burke as The Actor. Both excel as just the two of them slip effortlessly between various characters.
The Woman in Black is directed by Robin Herford, with designs by Michael Holt and lighting by Kevin Sleep. The staging and sound effects are superb.
Kipps engages a young actor to help him tell his story and exorcise the fear that has gripped his soul. As they delve further into his darkest memories the borders between make-believe and reality begin to blur and the flesh begins to creep. The whole auditorium is the set, not just what happens on the stage, and that can unsettle the audiences as it is no longer their safe space. The audience’s imagination becomes the main driver to the action of the play. We are told that “the expression on her face filled me with indescribable loathing and fear.” We see a ghostly figure in black but at the end we are left doubting if the Woman in Black ever actually existed.
The Woman in Black is a play that particularly appeals to young people and is used as part of the National Curriculum for English. Teachers find it a very fruitful piece to teach from, celebrating, as it does, the art of acting, as well as the simple joys of live theatre.
The play is well known for people returning to see it many times. If you have not been before then get yourself along to Mayflower Studios this week.
Tickets for The Woman in Black are on sale at mayflower.org.uk or 02380 711811.
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