At the Richmond Theatre, Simon Collins peers into a normal kitchen and discovers a paranormal argument...
OUR VERDICT
Helen Murray
What is a ghost? Is it a spirit of health or a freak damned to hell? Do they really exist? Where can I get one?
In 2:22 A Ghost Story, Danny Robbins provides no answers, instead presenting a domestic situation in which the puzzle of ghosts is debated by the afflicted characters. Ultimately, the discussion is inconclusive, but the story itself affirms that ghosts are real. You have been watching one.
In a science-based, technological society, the reality of ghosts is an absurd question to raise – until you move into a haunted house and have a baby to protect from phantom footsteps whilst lewd foxes are up to their tricks eerily screaming in the garden; and what with gothic fog, and thunder and lightning that somehow has a spooky accuracy of timing, you know the visitation will come again tonight as it does at 02:22 every night circling the baby’s cot.
Helen Murray
For the entire play, the audience watches the digital kitchen clock inexorably approaching the fateful moment. Prepare your scream.
One of the reasons this play works well is that the supernatural strand permeates what would be a passably good kitchen-sink drama even without the intrusion of the spectral realm.
Sam, a sceptical lecturer in astrophysics, forcefully played by James Bye (of Eastenders fame), is married to angst-beset Jenny, born a Catholic (Shvorne Marks, another TV regular). They are busy gentrifying the down-at-heel house they’ve moved to.
The new mother and wife is so frazzled she might be imagining all this ghost stuff. Or is it real?
Helen Murray
They spend the evening with another couple, Ben and Lauren (Grant Kilburn and Natalie Casey, also both accomplished actors). Lauren and Sam used to be an item, and there is still love there.
For the present, she has Ben, a wide-boy Londoner who remembers the area before the middle class arrived.
The tensions of class and sex are nicely established.
Like Jenny, Ben believes in ghosts, and together they set up a vigil awaiting the dreaded apparition.
They decide to hold a séance during which a spirit named Frank clearly indicates to attentive members of the audience the existence and identity of the primary ghost.
Helen Murray
There are other clues, too. I estimate about a third of the audience guesses well in advance the solution to the haunting that finally becomes definite at 2:22.
A troubling aspect of the production for a critic is that scene changes are marked by sudden, extremely shocking, violent sound and light effects. These have an entertainment value, as the ragged dolls noticed from a fairground ghost train. But they are absolutely gratuitous, not emerging from the story, imposed solely to thrill.
Of course, the audience enjoys drastic jolts even of this sort, and afterwards in the foyer I heard several people happily continuing the discussion about the reality of ghosts.
