Susan Hill’s A Woman in Black – A Ghost Story in a Pub – FUN!

An old barroom at The McKittrick Hotel offers an evocative, intimate atmosphere for a gothic ghost story featuring two outstanding thespians. Seated on rows of folding chairs, about 150 people get so involved, some jump at sound effects, others can’t help but warn those in onstage danger. Actors walk among us. Sounds seem to emanate from the four corners of the room.

Elderly solicitor Arthur Kipps (David Acton) has hired an actor/director (James Evans) to help him tell his family a real life story of haunting, confusion, and tragedy. Having been burdened by self-imposed silence so many years, he’s written out an experience he feels compelled to share before shuffling off this mortal coil. Unfortunately (as we see), Kipps is a dreadful public speaker. With no aspirations “to be another Olivier,” he “hums and mumbles” through a start several times before the director suggests acting out history. He’ll play the lawyer as a young man while his client narrates and takes the role of everyone else.

The real play begins in 1921 London when Kipps, a junior solicitor in jacket, tie, and homburg is assigned to sort out the estate of one Alice Drablow. He travels to Nine Lives Causeway in Crythin Gifford to discover that Eel Marsh House is cut off from the mainland at high tide and transportation must be secured. Village people warn him off. Local man Horatio Jerome accompanies him to Alice’s funeral where Kipps sees a hovering, emaciated woman in black. Not inappropriate. When he inquires about her of Jerome, the man turns white and bolts.

Kipps takes supplies out to the house and begins going through a substantial amount of papers. He hears sounds for which he can’t account, including those of a crashing horse and carriage and screams. The woman in black makes intermittent appearances. There’s an inordinate amount of fog. Pulsing, creaking noises seem to come from behind a locked door – to which he eventually gains access.

As he bicycles back and forth with food, the increasingly anxious young man garners information from townsman Sam Daily later supported by letters he unearths. The tragedy of Alice and her distressed sister Jennet is not only revealed but follows Kipps back to London at the completion of his work…just as it now follows him into the empty Victorian theater where we ostensibly sit.

Actors David Action and James Evans both have extensive, pedigree, British theater backgrounds. They’re marvelous. Action mercurially slips from role to role, physically as well as emotionally. Evans morphs from director to role-playing the tale’s protagonist with empathy and palpable anxiety.

Designer Michael Holt uses minimal furniture to maximum effect, especially beyond the locked door, often through a translucent scrim, where the secret room manifests in wonderful detail. Costumes are pitch perfect.

Lighting Designer Anshuman Bhatia and Sound Designer Sebastian Frost (Original Sound Design-Rod Mead) give us all the bells and whistles of an actual theater. Shadows creep, blackouts couldn’t be blacker, mist lingers; screams unnerve, footsteps and thumping emerge for all corners of the space, a horse and carriage feels six feet away.

Vaccination proof and ID required. Rules of the house permit masks to be lowered for drinks acquired before the production or at intermission.

In 1989 a television film was made of Susan Hill’s novel and in 2012, a feature film. This iteration started off as a low budget 1987 production in Scarborough. It arrived in London’s West End two years later taking up residence at the London Fortune Theatre that year and is currently the second longest play running in the West End.  

Completed in 1939, The McKittrick Hotel was intended to be New York City’s finest and most decadent luxury hotel of its time. Six weeks before opening, and two days after the outbreak of World War II, the legendary hotel was condemned and left locked, permanently sealed from the public until EMURSIVE brought it back to life with a series of unusual productions.

Photos by Jenny Anderson

Susan Hill’s A Woman in Black – A Ghost Story in a Pub
Adapted by Stephen Mallatratt from Susan Hill’s 1983 Gothic horror novel
Directed by Robin Herford
The McKittrick Hotel