Review by Simon Jenner, July 8 2025
One thing Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker realised straight off: strip your audience of old-world comfort. Show the most modern equipment wielded by protagonists: it’ll turn against them. Should I say with Frankenstein, cutting edge? In Stoker’s case his 1897 Dracula fielded recording cylinders. Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman gift us the lot, plus a troubled sceptical professor of parapsychology. Ghost Stories directed by them – with the originating director Sean Holmes – comes to Theatre Royal Brighton till July 12th.
Andy Room. Photo Credit: Hugo Glendinning
Four stories, no spoilers. It’s helped by Jon Bausor’s mostly superlative set and costumes, with James Farncombe’s lighting gulphing, sculpting and hollowing out dark and light. A cavernous site with two men on night-watch (one offstage), with a cabin suddenly popping out and recessed. It works for a car lost in the woods, a sudden child’s nursery in a plush home. And two somewhere elses. All shot through with Nick Manning’s schlock sound design with Scott Penrose’s special effects: mostly excellent though he might have gone easy on the H.P. Lovecraft moment.
M. R. James pioneered the sceptical Cambridge professor introduced to horror. But we’ve moved on and its subtler than that. Professor Goodman (Lucas Albion) arrives in front of the fire curtain to much photo-montage – do we need so many? Numbers shown don’t actually add up at the end. Goodman explains away three cases of the paranormal in his experience, each starting with a recording, and we’re introduced to the tales. Naturally Goodman’s a bit unreliable. This is batted away by Albion in Goodman’s affable banter that gets a bit shrill.
One driver, Dyson and Nyman feel, is guilt. They use Goodman to explore the obvious. One character isn’t wracked at all; possibly a key but not brought to a point. Tony Matthews (an admirably bluff and guilty David Cardy) is the nightwatchman with a daughter he ought to visit. Simon Rifkind (Andy Room, semaphoring guilt and terror) can’t admit he’s failed his driving test. But there’s a reunion before everyone’s off to uni. His father finds Simon never completed his UCCA form. That might have been explored. Finally older-but-laddish broker Mike Priddle (Clive Mantle, Olivier-nominated for his Lenny in Of Mice and Men) is starting a family late with younger ambitious Maria.
There’s a clever denouement tying this up, but one link tying Priddle to Goodman is unclear. The script’s variable though there’s welcome interactive moments. Drawn-out speeches are needed but they’re not given just that telling detail that makes say The Woman in Black so compelling. Or again the human agency in 2: 22. Rare loose ends are dipped in noirish reveals. Wherever clever use is made of contemporary (if not start-of-the-art) tech, the set works superbly. There’s only a few effects that don’t, but you judge. At 85 minutes straight through, this is pure scary, not horror. There’s reasons Ghost Stories is on its second tour out of the West End. Here’s a convenient (and reasonable) way to see why.
Two cast members were changed too recently for photographs to be included.
Casting Director Ginny Schiller CDG, Associate Director Andy Room, Stunt/Fight Director Jonathan Holby, Movement Co-ordinator Lloyd McDonagh, Costume Supervisor Becky Gunstone, Props Supervisor Will Edwards, Production Manager Tom Nickson.
CSM Claire Roberts, DSM Tom Lewer ASM (Book Cover) Kate Buston, ASM (Technical) Joseph Brown, Her of Lighting Abbi Clarke, Head of Sound Simon McCorry, Head of Wardrobe Caz Offord, Tech Swing Steph Weaver.
Photo Credit: Hugo Glendinning
