'It Walks Around The House At Night' review — tantalising thrills in a contemporary ghost story

Read our review of It Walks Around The House At Night, now in performances at the Southwark Playhouse to 28 March.

Summary

• It Walks Around The House At Night is a new ghost story drama
• Tim Foley's horror play follows an actor who is hired to haunt a mansion
• George Naylor gives a nimble performance as the actor
• Neil Bettles' eerie production features effective lighting and sound design

There’s no one way to stage a ghost story, of course, but as a guiding principle, less is often more. The figments of our imaginations are more terrible than any ghoulish sighting. Tim Foley’s new horror play, directed by Neil Bettles for touring company ThickSkin, seems impatient to show us what’s lurking in the dark. But it’s not only a few too many flashes of a black-cloaked spectre with creepy long fingers that soften its potential to chill: the play has a chatterbox script that’s bloated with ideas. And though some run like spider silk, connecting fantasy with reality, they also numb the fear factor.

It’s a tantalising set-up nonetheless. Struggling actor Joe (George Naylor) is preyed on at the bar where he works by a handsome stranger, David, whose motives make those of Baby Reindeer’s Martha seem harmlessly jovial. David offers Joe a week’s work at Paragon Hall, a remote manor house suspiciously lacking a digital footprint. He’s to dress up as the ghost of a former Victorian resident of the house, and walk its grounds after dark. But it turns out Joe is far from the scariest thing lurking in those woods, and when things start to get spooky, David ups his fee from £2,000 to £10,000 to convince him to stay.

Class, and the privilege afforded to those who don’t have to risk their safety to stay afloat, is a theme that pulses more strongly as things develop, and though the message is heavy-handed in places – with Joe quoting Simon Armitage’s poem ‘Those Bastards in their Mansions’ – it’s neatly laced through the plot proper.

Less effective, though, is the swathe of peripheral characters who ensure Joe is never truly isolated. Although his colleagues checking on him with messages and phone calls, not to mention his ex turning up, lend the whole debacle a contemporary and lifelike veneer, these injections of moral support mean we’re never quite as concerned for him as we should be. The humour undermines the horror, and a slew of anecdotes about his work and love life mean the whole thing lacks immediacy.

But Naylor navigates this convoluted story with the agility of a gymnast, and the physical presence of the Dancer (Oliver Baines), a character whose story mirrors Joe’s, sets this work apart from the other horrors stalking London’s stages at present.

Pete Malkin’s sound design works in tandem with Joshua Pharo’s lighting to ensure jump scares land with maximum effect, and on a set designed by Bettles and Tom Robbins, apparitions appear seemingly from nowhere, and are gone again in claps of light.

The set, where a moat of sodden woodchip circles Joe’s bedroom, allows for the action to shift seamlessly and frequently from indoors to outdoors – and nods to an early distinction made: the property’s demons walk around its parameters, rather than inside the house. Pharo’s video design illuminates the back wall with sketches of the property, maps and cinematic red lettering – a nice touch, but not really necessary. There really is a lot going on here when a little could have had a greater impact.

It Walks Around The House At Night is at the Southwark Playhouse to 28 March. Book It Walks Around The House At Night tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: It Walks Around The House At Night (Photos by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan)