We may be about as far from the witching season as it’s possible to get, but skin-crawling jump scares and flawless stagecraft turned Ghost Stories into a spirited night of theatre.
The show – written by League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman – is a love letter to horror but never plays things too seriously or too disturbing.
The experience of the play – which is on at HMT until Saturday – is more akin to riding on a ghost train.
Ear-deafening shocks come after the slow ratcheting up of tension, and the jump scares provoke nervous laughter as much as they do screams.
This is to say, even scaredy-cats will be able to stomach Ghost Stories.
The show – which debuted in the West End 15 years ago – has a no-spoiler policy, which makes sense since most of the enjoyment comes from the shock and surprises.
Like the 1945 British horror film Dead of Night – which gets a namecheck early in the show – Ghost Stories is an anthology. Each spooky tale is anchored by Professor Goodman (played by Dan Tetsell), a sceptical parapsychology expert who recounts his interviews with three people who have supposedly encountered the paranormal.
Three tales of terror
In the first story – for my money, the best of the bunch – we meet Tony Matthews (David Cardy), a night watchman who gets more than he bargained for during his shift.
The second involves a tearaway teenager (Eddie Loodmer-Elliott), who takes his dad’s car for a spin and runs into a bit of bother in the woods.
The third features Casualty’s Clive Mantle as a businessman grappling with nerves about becoming a first-time dad.
There’s a lot more to these stories than the sparse synopsis above, but to go into more detail would deprive audiences of what makes them so fun.
As the supernatural forces take hold of each story, they reach a crescendo of special effects and sound design, not to mention some trickery that Derren Brown – Andy Nyman’s frequent collaborator – would be proud of.
Jon Bausor’s set designs deserve praise, too, as they twist and turn almost as much as the plot.
As a horror aficionado, I perhaps wish that Ghost Stories had leaned a little harder into the terror and dread aspect.
While there’s no denying that the jump scares are a brutally effective way of engaging the audience, they can start to feel a little one-note and repetitive.
Thinking back on the actual scary moments, we see a lot less than we think we do.
Lighting effects give us just enough to glimpse the terrors before our eyes but not too much to rob them of their impact.
Nyman and Dyson know that our imaginations will fill in the blanks …
Ghost Stories runs at HMT until April 5. You can buy tickets here.
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