Ghostly goings on hit the spot in The Woman in Black
Review: The Woman in Black
Turning up at the White Rock Theatre ready for a ghost story made the first 20 minutes of this play enjoyably puzzling.
It begins with a genuinely funny series of scenes between an enthusiastic actor and a bumbling solicitor, but the laughs are edged with a sense that things are going to get darker.
And when they do, the theatrical manipulation is so total, so devastatingly effective, it makes for an unforgettable piece of theatre.
Arthur Kipps (played by Robert Demeger - a long time Old Town resident in the 1980s and 1990s) is the lawyer in question who has had his life turned upside down.
In a bid to achieve some closure he has written down his experiences to perform to his friends and family, and approaches The Actor (Peter Bramhill) in a bid to polish his reading.
The Actor takes to his task with gusto (and an eye on potential profits, it is suggested) and between them the two set about recreating Kipps' strange tale of Eelmarsh House.
Sent there to sort through the papers of a recently dead old recluse, Kipps becomes embroiled in a nightmare, which he and The Actor to bring to life.
What follows is a genuinely unnerving story of love, loss and envy which bounces along at a perfect pace and in which the audience gets totally engrossed.
The actors are both superb - transforming before your very eyes - and the set is a masterpiece of haunting simplicity.
At times the tension in the theatre was palpable and although the outcome is not perhaps as strong as what precedes it, this is more of a fault with the original story than any criticism of the production.
All in all this is an utterly mesmerising evening - and a coup for the White Rock.
Go, and revel in the brilliance.
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Weather for Bexhill-on-Sea
Monday 13 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 2 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
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