I could definitely cobble together a wanky theory for you about why there’s so much great horror theatre around at the moment.
But all you need to know is that there just is, and that following Paranormal Activity and A Ghost in Your Ear – and with the Almeida’s fine looking Under the Shadow on the horizon – there’s reason to get your hopes up that when a nominally scary new play comes along it won’t make you die screaming of cringe.
Tim Foley is a playwright who has also written several Doctor Who audio adventures, two strands to his career that come together very nicely in It Walks Around the House at Night, a rip-roaring horror adventure that packs in laughs and chills in equal measure without actively crossing the line into full on comedy.
Superficially the set up is remarkably similar to Hampstead Theatre’s A Ghost in Your Ear: both are about misfit out of work actors who get caught up in ominous supernatural goings on in spooky mansions. But where Jamie Armitage’s play was heavily indebted to MR James, Foley’s is more of a spicy mix, with early Lovecraft the prominent flavour.
Joe (George Naylor) is a cynical gay ‘actor’ – inverted commas because in reality he works in a shitty pub while not getting any acting work. He’s on the cusp of trying to get a real job when one of the regulars – a handsome, aloof man named David who Joe dubs ‘the mysterious stranger’ – asks if Joe could do a gig at his country estate. The idea is that Joe will get bed and board and dress as a Victorian (or possibly Georgian or Edwardian, he’s not sure) ghost and do a circuit through the house’s grounds, once a night for five nights, in order to offer a spooky frisson to David’s visiting nieces. Joe is ecstatic, both because it’s £2,000 to walk in a circle five times, and because he is convinced that David is into him.
This is not very Lovecraftian, but of course we are well aware that horny, messy Joe will not find the nocturnal circumnavigations of Paragon Hall to be the cakewalk he anticipates. On night one, he swears something is following him through an eerie patch of woodland. On night two, it gets an awful lot worse.
Naylor is superb company as the dissolute Joe – not so much an actual idiot as a man so jaded and so resigned to his failure that he’s given up on engaging seriously with the world. He’s great company, and as much as it’s obvious to us that something will happen at the manor, Foley is great at layering up a sense of mystery (and later on, refusing to explain away everything that happens). It’s also inventively directed by Neil Bettles, who eschews cheap jump scares in favour of inventive creepiness that runs the gamut from good old dry ice to the bungee rope Naylor uses to stand at seemingly impossible angles in certain scenes. A shout out must also be awarded to Pete Malkin’s otherworldly ambient score.
Sure, it’s a rollicking adventure yarn rather than a work of profundity, and Foley’s attempts to give it an edge of class commentary don’t feel embedded deeply enough to land. The ending to the main story is a bit overripe, although I think satisfyingly wrapping this sort of thing up is easier said than done - plays can’t really come to an abrupt, shocking stop in the way a short story can.
But it’s a hugely enjoyable – and yes, scary – piece of theatre horror entertainment, and while it’s not even the only one of those you can catch in London these days, it still feels like a breath of fresh air in a musty old tomb.
