[title]
Theatremakers often have a bit of a thing for ghosts, for obvious reasons. They make for a good yarn. They drag the past haunting and howling into the present. And because theatre is ephemeral, there's something especially seductive about the idea that scenes of heightened emotion leave traces behind, lingering in the spaces where they unfolded.
King's Head Theatre's new co-artistic director Mark Ravenhill airs his penchant for spooky stuff in this appropriately chilling play, full of the stories of the venue it's performed in. ‘The Haunting of Susan A’ begins with Ravenhill himself offering an affable potted history of this half-century-old pub theatre, relishing the gory details of the bare-knuckle fights it allegedly used to host. But, in awkwardly contrived style, he ends up ceding the stage to Susan, a woman who's got a more convincing story of theatrical haunting to share.
Played by Suzanne Ahmet, who has the audience hanging on her every fear-drenched word, Susan narrates her journey from down-to-earth lesbian engineering student to highly-strung fringe theatre actor to troubled recluse, haunted by her brush with the other side. Ravenhill's appealingly metatheatrical story squeezes every drop of atmosphere from this dank basement space, serving up jump scares, sudden blackouts and eerie flickers of filament bulbs – alongside the deeper chills that come from reflecting on the relationship between theatregoing and ghoulish voyeurism.
'The Haunting of Susan A' could easily feel like a theatre fan's in-joke, but although it references everything from Shakespeare’s wonder year to super-agent Peggy Ramsay, it feels welcoming and expansive, always ready to show its workings to an eager audience.
Still, its sums don't always add up. It centres on the violent historical deaths of two women without drawing clear lines between their stories, or reflecting in detail on gendered power dynamics. Nor does it quite explain why the mere glimpse of a ghost is enough to drive Susan to insanity. Is it that she realises she's serving a male playwright's warped agenda? Or is it that acting itself is a morally dubious pursuit, especially when you're serving up chills to a bloodthirsty audience?
For all its sketchiness, though, this is a hugely enjoyable piece that reaches out to embrace the contours of the King's Head's storied black box space. It feels like a fitting farewell to a theatre venue that's soon to be lost for good, haunted by a new and noisily chomping crowd of Islington restaurant-goers as gentrification bites (but fear not fringe fans, the theatre's moving to a swish new space next door – and will no doubt take its ghosts with it).