Drowning Rock

Playwright Matthew Wood recently landed a job creating historical scenes for tourists at the Tower of London. So it's no surprise that his shot at Halloween horror is an absorbing (if fractured) piece of storytelling, as steeped in popular sea shanties and Cornish folklore as in the sinister seaport fantasy of HP Lovecraft's 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth', from which it takes inspiration.

The conventions of the Victorian ghost story are oiled and set: a skeptical young Londoner (Andrew O'Donoghue) leaves his pregnant wife to investigate family history in a rural spot that routinely plops off the authorities' radar. He is guided by two superstitious locals: a stoic old yarn-spinner (John Gregor) and a young mute (JP Lord). In pursuing his physical investigations, he begins to charter his own psychological and genealogical depths.

In this case the setting is a malfunctioning lighthouse, the mystery: what drove an early diver to suicide by sailing a ship full of dynamite into 'Drowning Rock'?

The plot is overlong and overcomplicated and Wood's own production pulls short of 'The Woman in Black's ingenuity when it comes to staging lots with little.

But his storytelling is like the sea – with the help of some immersive sound design, one moment it's lapping feebly at your toes, the next it's pulled you in and dragged you under. And the maritime tradition disgorges narrative gifts like riches from a shipwreck.

The sound of a man choking on air as the 'sea change' overtakes him. The sight of a severed plait of hair – or is it seaweed? The mental image of a pirate queen, chained to a rock to be raped by sailors even as she drowns in the rising sea. These potent impressions linger queasily like a bad fish supper.