The Woman In Black, in The McCarthy, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on various dates until August 2. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com IT began in a bar as a bonus Christmas show at the old Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1987 and has since wittily scared seven million people witless in a trail of terror to 41 countries. Now a translation into Japanese will mark The Woman In Black's first foreign language excursion, with a French premiere in Paris in the cross-Channel pipeline.

No wonder the SJT has gone back to Black as part of the Scarborough theatre's 60th anniversary season in a revival by the original director and designer, Robin Herford and Michael Holt, that will transfer this fright night to the Fortune Theatre in London with its landmark casting of the first father-and-son combination, Christopher and Tom Godwin.

Christopher was a mainstay of Alan Ayckbourn's SJT repertory company for many a summer and first played the senior role of haunted solicitor Arthur Kipps 15 years ago; Tom was born in the East Coast resort, so this production is a homecoming in more ways than one for the late Stephen Mallatratt's peerless piece of theatre noir.

York Press:

Bumpy ride: Tom Godwin and Christopher Godwin in The Woman In Black. Picture by Tony Bartholomew

 

Mallatratt's two-man version of Scarborough writer Susan Hill's ghost story begins in a dusty theatre as Arthur Kipps (Godwin senior) employs a young actor (Godwin junior) to help him exorcise the fear that has filled his soul for more than 50 years. "For my health, my reason," he says, "It must be told. I cannot bear the burden any longer."

Such is Kipps's obsession with the curse that he believes a spectral woman in a black cape with a wasted face has placed on his family. The Actor is initially sceptical, his mood light, yet the depth of Kipps's desire to recover his peace of mind starts to grip the thespian too, and in turn the audience...even if you have seen it previously.

The terrifying tale with the terrible toll is told in a theatrical re-enactment rendered with only two chairs, a skip of papers and a curtain. Behind this gauze partition are the stairwell, passages, rooms and contents of the haunted Eel March House, as the Actor plays young Arthur Kipps and stage novice Mr Kipps adapts himself to all manner of other parts, while looking ever more paralysed by fear anew.

Aided by Gareth Owen's startling sound effects, a hanging rail of costume props and a lighting design by Ric Mountjoy, where darkness and lengthening shadows of candle-lit spindly fingers are all important, the Godwin duo re-create Kipps's flesh-creeping journey to the eerie marshlands. There, ceaseless winds and silence-shattering screams indicate an isolated place at odds with its wretched self, a place that feels all the more uncomfortably claustrophobic in the narrow confinement of the McCarthy auditorium.

Applying their new coat of Black, the slim Godwins look suitably gaunt as the curse consumes old Kipps and the young Actor too, while the family alliance has an innate sense of Mallatratt's dark humour. Both excel with their storytelling skills too, and Godwin senior is a master of the cameo in an eerie ghost ride steered so gravely yet playfully by Herford.

The Woman In Black, in The McCarthy, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on various dates until August 2. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com