Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Classic Ghosts’, which is at Wolverhampton’s Grand Theatre until Saturday 15th February and at Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn from April 7th to 9th 2014
‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ by M R James and Charles Dickens’ ‘The Signalman’ are two of the nation’s favourite and most frequently dramatised ghost stories. Middle Ground Theatre Company have revived them back-to-back as a vehicle for actor Jack Shepherd. They surround him with two excellent sets and a clever synthesis of high tech projection and good old-fashioned stagecraft. And it was gratifying to witness the audience jump highest at the traditional rather than the electronic effects.
There’s usually a casualness about Shepherd’s acting which is put to good effect here to lull us into placidity….making us all the more vulnerable to the horrors to come.
James sets the first spare story in a rundown coastal hotel in Suffolk (in 1907). Shepherd’s ‘Professor’ discovers a ancient whistle amongst the graves of long dead Knights Templar. He scratches away at a Latin inscription “who is this who is coming?” Naturally everyone in the audience knows he shouldn’t blow into it – but, of course, he does – and ‘something’ does indeed come for him. You know when it’s going to come because the auditorium emergency lights go out – but it is nevertheless a scalp-tightening moment.
I must mention the beach. The hotel rooms look out onto a magnificent projected panorama of sand dunes and rolling sea that changes with the time of day and, if carefully watched, springs its own, unresolved, surprises.
There are whistles of another kind in ‘The Signalman’ whose lovingly recreated box overlooks trains howling into a lonely, deep, dark tunnel.
Charles Dickens himself narrowly escaped death in the Staplehurst Train Crash of 1865 and cleverly taps into our collective, if morbid, interest in railway accidents.
On night shift, Shepherd’s troubled signalman is befriended by a traveller staying locally (played by Terrence Hardiman) to whom he confides his growing premonition.
Again the long slow suspense builds to a disturbing conclusion.
These two plays are clearly faithful to the original short stories. It feels as if the adapter Francis Evelyn has also stuck solidly to the original dialogue – which is consequently bookish at times and occasionally leaves a characters speechless in what should be a full blown conversation. There were also moments when I was not initially sure if a shadowy figure was yet another ghostly apparition or a stagehand changing the props.
But the stories are absolute classics and their presentation immensely authentic and atmospheric. The writers knew what they were doing and so does Middle Ground Theatre Company.
Visit www.grandtheatre.info for bookings & information about Wolverhampton’s Grand Theatre
Visit www.theatresevern.co.uk for bookings & information about Theatre Severn