Crossing the country on its 2025 tour, Ghost Stories arrives in the capital just in time for Halloween. And if you want to be scared out of your wits, then this is the show to see.
Co-written and co-directed by Jeremy Dyson (the lesser-known of the four League of Gentlemen) and Andy Nyman (who is better known for his acting work), this isn't the sort of insidious horror that gets under your skin – it jolts you out of it.
Since it premiered in Liverpool 15 years ago, reviewers have, at the behest of its creators, refrained from going into detail about the play's twists and turns. But I don't think Dyson and Nyman will haunt me if I tell you that it features a lecture by parapsychologist Professor Goodman (Jonathan Guy Lewis, gleefully raising hackles) as a framework for a trio of tales involving the monstrous and the supernatural.
Goodman remains a sceptic, the audience remains on the edge of its seats, then there's a coda that you'll never guess unless you've seen the (not very good) 2017 film version. Even if you have, Ghost Stories is much better experienced in 3D, surrounded by a screaming crowd.
I'd bet money on some of the screams being pre-recorded, like the opposite of a laugh track, but there were lots of genuine yelps and gasps from folk around me.
Nick Manning's sound design – featuring ominous rumbles, disembodied voices, shrieking sound effects and those extra screams – is one of the reasons that the play is so scary.
The same goes for James Farncombe's lighting, which allows for so many shadows you're constantly fearful about what's lurking in them. Jon Bausor's sets are pitched at disconcertingly weird angles and Scott Penrose's special effects deliver jolting images, many of which will have you grasping your partner or plus-one in shock.
The slow pace helps too, ratcheting up the suspense so you're wondering when something scary will happen and just how hellish it will be.
Nyman's son Preston makes for a suitably rattled young driver stuck in the woods on a very dark night, David Cardy is an equally rattled nightwatchman, and Clive Mantle is a businessman with such an inflated sense of self-importance that you actually want something awful to happen to him.
And eventually it does, in a play that holds you in its grip for 85 nerve-shredding minutes.
Ghost Stories is at the Peacock Theatre, London, until 8 November.
Saga Magazine has teamed up with London Theatre Direct to offer you tickets at the best prices and with savings of up to 60%.
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