This article first appeared in THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

6th December 2009

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Usually I hate it when people try to scare me with tales of haunted houses and evil spirits. I’d like to claim that this is because – as an ardent rationalist – I refuse to buy into ghost stories. There’s already plenty to be scared about in our day-to-day lives (crime, reckless driving and the mortal consequences of government incompetence) without having recourse to supernatural terrors.

Yet, if I’m honest, my dislike actually stems from the fact that I’m easily frightened. When listening to macabre camp fire stories or watching B-grade horror movies, I get the willies like a little boy, crawl into a ball on my chair and cling to my wife’s arm with clammy hands.

It was against expectation, then, that I thoroughly enjoyed having my pants scared off when attending The Woman in Black in London some years ago. At the time I attributed this to the touristic thrill of seeing a West End production; so, when I heard that the show was to be performed in South Africa, I was fairly confident that I’d be able to indulge in a kind of nostalgic comparison without getting lured into a state of dread once again.

How wrong I was. It was even more terrifying second time round.

The Woman in Black is something of a new departure for Anton Luitingh (whose professional career has mostly been in musical theatre) and Eckard Rabe (recognisable to most for his role in a local TV soapie, although he has a distinguished stage CV). Both deliver convincing performances in this play, which was originally adapted for the stage by Stephen Mallatratt from the novel by Susan Hill.

Not having read the book, I can’t comment on how the change in medium affects the ‘fear factor’ of this particular ghost story; but, while Stephen King and others have established horror as a popular genre on the page, we are not accustomed to it as a stage phenomenon – horror on film is the standard. As movie-going audiences have become more attuned to the conventions of horror flicks, however, it has become increasingly difficult to make films that are truly scary.

The Woman in Black does not depend on the cheap thrills typically found in horror movies: special effects, non-diegetic music, blood and gore. Certainly, it uses all the tricks of the theatre trade – bold lighting changes, eerie sets and backdrops, blood-curdling sound cues – but what makes the play interesting is that, instead of hiding these methods, it foregrounds them. It emphasises its own artifice by constantly reminding the audience that the ghost story is a play-within-the-play.

In that story, we meet one Arthur Kipps (Luitingh), a junior solicitor who is dispatched from his London office to the misty marshlands of England’s east coast, where he is responsible for tying up the estate of a recently deceased old widow. Along the way he encounters the terse inhabitants of the area (variously performed by Rabe), from whom he gradually learns that the isolated house in which he has to perform his duties is haunted.

Kipps, who has confidently declared “I don’t believe in ghosts”, is forced to rescind this position as he experiences the haunting for himself, discovering as he does so the origins of all the ghoulish activity. He survives the gruesome onslaught, but some years later the eponymous woman in black appears to him again – with tragic consequences.

This plot is revealed by the older Arthur Kipps (Rabe), not through a straightforward narrative recollection, but by a self-consciously theatrical retelling; Kipps has approached an enthusiastic young actor-director (Luitingh) to help him depict the events on stage. We are watching them rehearse the play and, as a result, character portrayals are frequently interrupted by conversations in which the two men discuss stage conventions and storytelling methods.

This creates a curious effect. We are constantly reminded that we are sitting in a theatre, watching a performance; yet, as the line between fiction and reality is blurred, we cannot help becoming engrossed in the story – and are thus even more susceptible to precisely the theatrical devices we have been warned about.

For Kipps, staging his story offers a kind of talking cure. Like the ancient mariner, he is compelled to tell his tale in order to be rid of it. In a final twist, however, as Kipps unburdens himself he passes on the ghost’s ‘curse’ to his young thespian friend.

The audience, too, has seen the ghost – but we are protected by the safe confines of the theatre. For us, instead, there is catharsis. As Aristotle observed over two millennia ago, watching such events unfold evokes in us a combination of fear and pity for the protagonists, taking us to brink of an existential (or in this case supernatural) abyss and then leading us back to the real world.

In the case of The Woman in Black, this is a particularly sobering return – one leaves the theatre to face the gaudy excesses of Montecasino and the mania of Johannesburg’s highways. Yet the play has allowed spectral horrors to replace, albeit temporarily, the altogether mundane terrors of city living. In many ways this is a preferable fear, leaving audience members declaring: I love it when people try to scare me.