Review: THE WOMAN IN BLACK, Fortune Theatre, 1 December 2016

It's not quite The Mousetrap, but The Woman In Black is a West End institution, racking up 27 years residency at the Fortune Theatre. With a recent change of cast, I went along to see just what it was that kept putting (squeaky) bums on seats.

Round the back of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and as old-fashioned a London theatre as one could wish to see (old playbills framed on the walls of the narrow staircase, toilets jammed into the tiniest spaces, disabled access discreet) the experience starts at the door. There's an Edwardian air about, as there should be for ghost stories, which need the distance of years to support the suspension of disbelief.

That traditional approach continues once the play starts - for this production is as much an exploration of the power of theatre as it is a haunted house horror. During a (slightly too long) framing scene, we learn that there's a dreadful tale to be told and just two men and a handful of props to do it - not so much a high school musical as a high concept horror! Once the men settle into their roles, West End theatregoers may be surprised at having to imagine a pony and trap and a little dog, but regulars at fringe venues will know the form.

In some ways, the work we have to do as an audience is a limbering up exercise for the leaps of imagination to come, as we're drawn ever more closely to the dark house isolated at the end of the causeway, the door behind which surely only the most unspeakable traumas await, the shadows that never quite resolve in our vision. With no holograms, no video, no magic carpet flying over our heads, the tension is ratcheted up notch by notch with only "theatre" to do the job - and it's all the more effective for that limitation. This is an anti-panto in more senses than one.

Stuart Fox and Joseph Chance have recently taken over the roles of Arthur Kipps and The Actor, and both are as slick and as comfortable as you would expect. Fox, mumbling at first, gives a bravura performance taking on a variety of roles with a change of coat or hat to help transformation - but, of course, it's the subtle modifications of mannerisms and movement that really do the work in creating all the characters required for the story. There's a hint of Ronnie Barker's multiple role-playing at work here - high praise indeed.

Chance gets the sceptical straight man and gives a nicely judged descent into madness, as what can't be real becomes real before his very eyes. He is our route into the story and as his belief ebbs and flows, so too does ours - one raised eyebrow, one moment that provokes memories of Scooby Doo or Rocky Horror and we're sunk, but Chance is only sceptical in his role, never risking a nodding wink to the stalls.

So it all does what it says on the tin and the return business shows that the punters want exactly that - and why not? For me, it's a little too slick and a little too slow for my taste, but reviewers often want things shorter and faster (we don't pay for our tickets). Though it's all in aid of heightening tension, it takes a long time to get to the haunted house and, conversely, the detailed exposition of how things came to such a pretty pass, is delivered rather hurriedly come the curtain.

But such quibbles are just that - quibbles. The Woman In Black is likely to rest uneasy for a few more years yet.

The Woman in Black continues at the Fortune Theatre.

Photo Tristram Kenton.