Review: 2:22 A GHOST STORY, Theatre Royal Bath

I’m looking forward to seeing the much-hyped 2:22: A Ghost Story by Danny Robins on press night in Bath, first stop on its 2023-2024 UK tour.

After all, ghosts and spirits feature in several successes, from Hamlet, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Nine Night, to The Turn of the Screw and The Phantom of the Opera.

After five West End runs, star names along the way like Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole, and international flits to Los Angeles, Melbourne and Singapore, surely 2:22 A Ghost Story will be a fun, phantom-filled, on the edge of my seat evening.

Well, I’m afraid that I don’t find the promised thriller play all that thrilling. There’s the odd joke – but overall, it isn’t much fun. And yes, there are plenty of references to ghosts, but by the end of the night I feel a bit duped.

The plot involves young couple Jenny (Eastender’s Ruby Allen) and Sam (Nathaniel Curtis from It’s a Sin), who buy a fixer-upper in London. For several nights at the same time – 2:22 am precisely ­– Jenny hears spooky sounds of footsteps broadcast through the baby monitor in her daughter Phoebe’s bedroom.

She also hears a man crying and is convinced the house is haunted, possibly by the former homeowner’s dead husband. Logical Sam, who missed hearing the sounds as he was away on a work assignment, is unconvinced about the existence of ghosts. He firmly tells Jenny there are more rational reasons for the mysterious noises she thinks she’s hearing.

Jenny and Sam hold a dinner party, inviting Lauren (Charlene Boyd, the strongest of the cast), an old university chum of Sam’s, and Ben, her new builder boyfriend. Ben (Joe

Absolom) is less sceptical than Sam about ghosts after an other-worldly experience when he was a child. Jenny coaxes everyone into staying up until 2:22 am to discover what’s going on.

The premise for the play’s a good one. So, why doesn’t it work?

Firstly, the kitchen set is positioned so the actors are way upstage for the dinner party scene and (spoiler alert) séance in the second act. It’s hard to hear their lines and they’re too distant from the audience. It’s not much better when they sit in the living room zone, as they talk side-to-side and rarely out towards the audience.

Also, the play feels under-rehearsed and leaden, and there is very little stagecraft when it comes to blocking and movement. Perhaps director Isabel Marr didn’t get enough time with her cast before the run began. Whatever the reason, it feels lazy and at times veers into am dram territory.

There’s very little tension in this production, which surely is what one expects in a play about bumps in the night and Jenny’s increasing paranoia of a supernatural intruder. Every scene break is accompanied by a loud scream, which is effective the first time – but irritating after that. A feeble way to scare the audience.

The soundscape is key to a ghost story. Ian Dickinson gives us the breathing and cries of the baby on the monitor, shrieks of mating foxes in the garden and music from the couples’ play lists. But it all feels quite obvious. Perhaps more could be done to subtly build up apprehension and anxiety.

To be fair, the themes that emerge are strong. Gentrification, class differences, marital power games, religious beliefs in a secular society, longing for what might have been and the effects of children on a young couple. All of these are touched on and could have been explored further – maybe even without the introduction of a poltergeist in the first place.

I really wanted to feel something for these characters. Unfortunately, I was only moved by the plight of Lauren, who as a mental health medic, was initially on Sam’s side in taking a rational approach to the strange goings on. She is then able to understand others’ views, too, as the four argue in the early hours. This could be down to Boyd’s excellent portrayal of her character’s vulnerability (Lauren has a tendency to down too many glasses of wine and unidentified pills), or more fleshed-out characterisation of her role.

And don’t get me started on the ending. A twist ending that I found hugely frustrating. One we’re not meant to reveal – “Shhh...Please don’t tell,” we’re instructed – in the manner of The Mousetrap. I won’t spoil things then by telling you the butler did it (just joking).

I was going to give this disappointing ghost story only a two-star rating, but have upped it to three, as groups of theatre goers around me appeared to be having a good time. Armed with bottles of vino and lots of enthusiasm, they arrive eager to see the young actors they know from screen in a stage horror haunting. Some of them remark they don’t go to the theatre often, but are glad they’ve come. Maybe next time, they can be rewarded with something more substantial than the wraith-like 2:22 A Ghost Story.

2:22 A Ghost Story runs at Theatre Royal Bath until September 9, and then tours the UK until summer 2024

Photo credit: Johan Persson

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