The Woman In Black

by Stephen Mallatratt

I watched this play just now at Stirling Players, which was directed by Dannielle Ashton. I actually was keeping my hopes up because the last play I watched there was not very good. But this is in a different class altogether. First the plot, as described on The Woman in Black site.

Eel Marsh House stands tall, gaunt and isolated, surveying the endless flat saltmarshes beyond the Nine Lives Causeway, somewhere on England's bleak East Coast. Here Mrs Alice Drablow lived - and died - alone. Young Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is ordered by his firm's senior partner to travel up from London to attend her funeral and then sort out all her papers. His task is a lonely one, and at first Kipps is quite unaware of the tragic secrets which lie behind the house's shuttered windows. He only has a terrible sense of unease. And then, he glimpses a young woman with a wasted face, dressed all in black, at the back of the church during Mrs Drablow's funeral, and later, in the graveyard to one side of Eel Marsh House. Who is she? Why is she there? He asks questions, but the locals not only cannot or will not give him answers - they refuse to talk about the woman in black, or even to acknowledge her existence, at all. So, Arthur Kipps has to wait until he sees her again, and she slowly reveals her identity to him - and her terrible purpose. 

The Woman In Black treads in the footsteps of the classic ghost story, following the tradition of Charles Dickens and M.R James, of Henry James and Edith Wharton. It is not a horror story or a tale of terror, yet the events build up to a horrifying climax and instil a sense of horror. It relies on atmosphere, a vivid sense of place, on hints and glimpses and suggestions, on what is shadowy, heard and sometimes only half-seen, to chill the reader's blood to the marrow and make reading the book alone at night inadvisable for the faint-hearted. 

Stephen Mallatratt's adaptation for the stage remains entirely true to the book itself and uses much of Susan Hill's own descriptive writing and dialogue, while transforming the novel into a totally gripping piece of theatre. 

This is a wonderful play, the words in it so beautiful. And what is powerful is there are only 3 actors in the play, yet it is so gripping. In this particular production, the actors were all fantastic and I could not find fault at all. I were at times lost in their world and had forgotten I was sitting in a theater. The power of imagination is amazing, and in this play you are pushed to every faculty of your imagination effortlessly to dream this world that is dark and eerie. And you will be afraid, in the dark, it is scary. you feel alone, and a deep tingle down your spine. I love it and could not stop smiling at how wonderful this play is. If it comes along in your town, do give it a chance. You will not regret it, or maybe you would, depending on how much you like horror.