Now on its fifth cast and fourth West End theatre, Danny Robins’s supernatural hit gets a shot of pure star wattage with the acting debut of Girls Aloud singer and X Factor judge Cheryl in the lead role of Jenny.
Having herself jettisoned three separate surnames and gone from tabloid fodder to national treasure and back again, it was perhaps inevitable she’d add a third strand to her performing portfolio in this show. Robins’ play is already a meme on theatre Twitter: in the future, we’ll all play Jenny in 2:22 for 15 minutes.
But is Cheryl any good? Actually, yes: certainly good enough to bring a new crowd to this superior, remorselessly effective spine-chiller.
Admittedly, sometimes you stop noticing her genuine emotional range or her slightly overemphatic gestures and simply gawp. Those dimples, those empathetic doe eyes, that nutcracker Geordie accent… Blimey, it’s really her! A sensational event, in every sense.
Jenny is a lapsed Catholic and new mum convinced the Hackney home she’s doing up with her know-all astronomer husband Sam has become haunted. Footsteps and other sounds began issuing from the baby monitor while he was stargazing on Sark. During a spectacularly drunken dinner for Sam’s university crush Lauren, a psychiatrist, and Ben, the rough-trade builder she’s settled for, rationalism and superstition battle it out till 2:22am, the time of the nightly visitation.
When it opened in 2021 the play showed a clear love for the ghost story genre but confounded expectation. Robins and director Matthew Dunster build old-school scares – lightning, sudden shrieks, lurching furniture – into the kind of modern milieu that contemporary plays rarely depict: one where people scroll on their phones and shout at the Amazon Echo. The stunt casting of untried or left-field actors as Jenny – Cheryl was preceded by Lily Allen, Giovanna Fletcher, Mandip Gill and Laura Whitmore - adds an extra frisson. Will the new girl bump into the furniture?
The play is witty, bracingly sweary and probes intriguing ideas. Ghosts could be straggling refugees from the afterlife, fragments of consciousness, or revenants stirred up by gentrification. Ben the builder grew up locally and resents ponces like Sam sanitizing the Kray Twins’ old stomping ground. His parallel dislike of Albanians muscling in on his business has taken on a new resonance. Luckily for the plot, he’s also a spiritualist.
This new iteration of the show had its own late shock when Jake Wood, the original Ben, had to step back in to replace a poorly Hugo Chegwin. He and Louise Ford’s Lauren generate a sparky tension. The central relationship has got coarser and shoutier, though, and it’s mostly not down to Cheryl. Sam should be a subtle, charming underminer but Scott Karim makes him a hectoring boor. Jenny should’ve fled long before the ghostly footsteps arrived.
It’s a minor shame because the play still compels, entertains and unnerves. It’s well placed to become the West End’s spookiest long-runner once the Woman in Black closes. And it’s become the sort of pro-celebrity vehicle that Chicago the musical formerly was, a place where those well-known in other fields can take a usually successful punt on acting (much to the disgust of the professionally trained and underemployed). In Cheryl’s case, it absolutely pays dividends.
