The Woman in Black

Solicitor Arthur Kipps has rented a theatre and hired an actor to help him recount a horrifying experience from his past. As a junior, he travelled to the north east coast of England to execute an elderly woman’s will. Alice Drablow lived alone in the eerily remote Eel Marsh House on a causeway that, at high tide, becomes completely cut off from the mainland and Kipps, rifling through her belongings, finds himself trapped.

Attending her funeral he caught sight of a woman dressed in black with a wasted white face and, alone in the Drablow house, he hears unexplained noises out on the marshes: a horse and carriage rearing to a halt, the screams of a child and his maid. In town, he learns the history of the house – a story of a mother, a carriage crash and a dead child. Local legend has it that sightings of her ghost signal the death of a child.

Using only a picnic hamper and a few well-chosen sound effects, two actors conjure the misty and mysterious environs of the coastal marshes at the Fortune Theatre. Originally staged in Scarborough, Stephen Mallatratt’s simple stage adaptation has become a hallmark for horror theatre – one that sends you home uncertain as to whether or not you watched a play or caught sight of a ghost yourself.