For years, my mother has talked about the most terrifying experience she’s ever had in a theatre, a trip that left her shaken out of her wits and insistent she would never put herself through it again. That experience was, of course, the West End adaptation of Susan Hill’s modern gothic classic, The Woman in Black, a stage show that petrified 13,232 audiences, including my poor mother, for 24 years before it officially closed in 2023. But with its current national tour, the spirit has been awakened again, and whom did I call up to retraumatise when I heard it was coming to the Playhouse? Strap in, Ma.

I’d not seen the stage show before, but had obviously heard some eerie tales, and I was intrigued to see how they would play out in a venue quite unlike the Fortune Theatre’s looming 1920s auditorium. Comfy and colourful as the Playhouses' seating is, it’s hard to imagine any wayward spectres lurking behind them. The floorboards onstage also seems to be set on a curious tilt - it’s so scary even the floor’s at a Dutch angle! I was wrong to doubt, though, and before long I was cowering in my seat with the best of them.

The Woman in Black begins with a slow burn when it comes to its scares, instead taking time to establish a metatheatrical dialogue between Arthur Kipps (John Mackay), whom the play’s terrible events actually befell, and The Actor (Daniel Burke), who explains how he will be adapting Kipps’ account for the stage. On a trip to settle the affairs of the reclusive Alice Drablow, Kipps spies a mysterious woman in black at her funeral, the mere mention of which seems to strike fear into the hearts of the town’s residents. Little does Arthur know he has become the latest target of a vengeful spectre, who brings with her terror and, ultimately, tragedy - a story that he hopes to share with an audience in the hope of exorcising this spirit.

Mackay and Burke make for a brilliant two-hander both in and out of their respective characters. The Actor’s kindly thespian frustration at Kipps’ lack of familiarity with the theatre plays beautifully against the latter’s timidity and vulnerability as he is forced to relive his trauma through another’s eyes. As the Actor, Burke’s level-headed, ‘push on through’ attitude grounds us in the world of the rational - when he becomes Kipps in the play-within-a-play, however, we see that attitude tested to its breaking point, and Burke does a wonderful job of conveying that fall into paranoia while still grasping for something, anything, explicable.

Mackay gives an extraordinary performance not just as Arthur but a rotating cast of characters his play-self encounters in the remote village of Crythin Gifford. Much like playing drunk, it is notoriously difficult to play a bad, or at least inexperienced, actor convincingly, and Mackay does it so well I heard a school group wonder if a member of staff had stumbled onstage. It makes his buttery smooth transition into play-Kipps’ employer a beautiful wrong-foot that enhances our sense of immersion as he moves chameleonically between the sleepy town’s main players. He never loses Kipps though, for whom the whole thing is an endurance test, and in his moments as himself it is palpable that the experience is breaking him.

The meta conceit is a particularly clever dramaturgical quirk of the show. Like any good ghost story, the minimal staging (recorded sound, a wicker basket serving as desk, carriage, bed etc.), compels the audience to see things where there are none - it encourages us to use our imagination, so we can then doubt it. It also makes for some incredibly evocative lighting and sound cues, especially the opaque fog of Eel Marsh moors or one mysterious door behind which an intermittent rocking can be heard (side note, I can’t recommend watching this show with schoolchildren enough; when the mysterious door was bathed in ominous light, I audibly heard one of them go “nope!”).

The genius of The Woman In Black’s spooks is that so much can be conveyed with so little - which is also the only potential note I have for this production. The volume for some of the sound based scares, especially the sequence involving an ill-fated pony and trap, have been cranked up to 11 in a way that I thought wasn’t strictly necessary - I want to be scared by the content of the noise more than its loudness, and the balance felt slightly off here. Similarly, I think our titular woman in black conveys much more dread as a silent, constantly observing presence. This is a grieving mother stuck in perpetual mourning, and I think in having her scream and gesture so witchily, we lose a little of the sense of pathos that makes her character so tragic.

But these gripes aside, it’s still one of the most effective horror productions I’ve seen in a theatre - never before have I heard an entire audience scream bloody murder so often. I only wish our ghost had had the chance to appear behind one unfortunate audience member, as I’m told was the case in the West End production. I did keep eyeing the emergency exits by the aisle in case she’d chosen to take an alternate route, but this staging is a bit more merciful (and left Mum slightly less rattled, which might be for the best!). I’d tell you to grab a ticket but every single performance this week is sold out; if the Woman in Black ever goes to her eternal rest, it won’t be anytime soon, and thank goodness for that.