Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Emily Bevan, Chipo Chung, Angela Clerkin, Jane Guernier, Joseph May, Martin Turner.
Houses have a symbolism all of their own and they also carry the weight of expectation with them. A home should be the place where a person feels safest of all, where once the door is locked and the lights go out, nothing real or imagined should be able to disturb the peace.
It is though where the mind wanders in the dark, the baggage that a person carries with them, in which makes them feel the chill of a strange house; that the creaks of a door in need of oiling are magnified and into which the unpeeled layers of the brain can easily manifest a supposed haunting. It is as the tremendously enjoyable and spooky tale, The Haunting of Hill House suggests people that are haunted, not houses.
Shirley Jackson’s book was so beloved by the Master of Horror Stephen King that he reviewed it in his 1981 book Danse Macabre and as the fear of emotion invoked in the book easily transfers to the stage, it is easy to see why Anthony Neilson and Melly Still would find it a captivating dream to give it every single blood curdling moment possible and every psychological aspect in which to give the Playhouse audience a good meaty play in which to wrap their arms around this Christmas.
It is the relationship between emotion and mental state that drives the play, a smashing achievement that is born out of the incredible lighting and dark shadows that creep across the stage as is pulled by the unknown and the unforgiving. It is also the rapport between the superb Chipo Chung and Emily Bevan, Theodora and Eleanor respectively, that sets the play upon its end, the bravery shown in the original book with the implicated desire of the bohemian Theodora being captured with a sense of grace by Ms. Chung and the skittish nervousness of a woman possessed by fanciful notions, of self-punishment and the need for an ounce of love or tenderness after years of mental abuse framed with great skill by Ms. Bevan.
A thrilling Playhouse Christmas show, one of grit, one of absolute splendid pacing and charm, everybody loves a ghost story after all.
Ian D. Hall