The Woman In Black...

Last night Stuart and I went to see The Woman In Black at the Fortune Theatre. The show has been running for 18 years and is billed at 'nerve-shedding'. Well, I wouldn't quite go that far but it is good fun. In an Edgar Alan Poe kind of a way.

The play is a two-hander (mostly) that tells the story of a certain Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, who is ordered by his firm's senior partner to travel up from London to attend a funeral and then sort out all the papers of the recently deceased Alice Drablow. We have an isolated location, tragic secrets, ghostly figures, uneasy locals and a big deserted house. All the elements of Gothic horror really.

We weren't really scared by any of it but the production was fun and the effects... well.. effective. Now if only those two girls sitting behind us hadn't kept screaming so loudly at every plot twist or vocalising their internal voices quite so loudly, "Don't go in there!" "Oh My God! Oh My God!" and then laughing nervously we might have enjoyed it more.

So was the play 'nerve-shedding'? No. But as Bart Simpson would say, maybe people were easier to scare back then.