MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
Class and gender tension flavoured ghost story
Well-paced production keeps PETER MASON, and the rest of audience, at the edge of their seats
ghost
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A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
2:22 A Ghost Story
Gielgud Theatre London
ENTHRALLING, all-consuming and definitely scary, 2:22 is just about the perfect theatrical ghost story, full of jumpy psychic tension but with a plot of substance, dialogue of depth and a slowly unfolding mystery that gives itself away only at the very death.
While the acting, direction and stage management are uniformly excellent, it’s Danny Robbins’s script that really makes it all work.
Clever and intriguing, it covers the events of a single winter’s evening as Jenny (Giovanna Fletcher) and Sam (Elliot Cowan) entertain a couple of friends to a housewarming dinner at their new home, which they’re gentrifying.
Sam has returned from a few days away, and it transpires that in his absence Jenny, looking after their new baby, has become deeply unsettled by some disturbing night-time goings-on at the house.
As more details come to light, the guests, Lauren (Stephanie Beatriz) and her new partner Ben (James Buckley), reveal themselves to be believers in the supernatural, much to the dismay of hyper-rationalist Sam, who finds himself arguing with increasing ineffectiveness against Jenny’s rising fears.
With tensions increasing, the four finally agree to settle their differences by embarking on a long vigil into the night, during which the decidedly non-ghostly surrounds of Sam and Jenny’s recently modernised high-tech dining room manage to take on a previously unimaginable air of foreboding.
Despite an over-liberal use of jump-scares, everything is so cannily done and so thoroughly enjoyable that it has the audience laughing at their own frayed nerves and frailty.
Well-paced, undercut with humour and seeded with subtle clues about the eventual outcome, nothing ever drags – and the action is so fascinating that you really feel you’re in there with the characters.
There’s more to the dialogue than just moving the story along, with underlying tensions related to class and gender relations. But Robbins has no pretensions for this to be anything other than a proper ghost story – and so it is.
Runs until February 12: https://222aghoststory.com/
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