It Walks Around the House at Night
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...
