The jump scares are perfectly placed in Mark Ravenhill’s delightfully tense new production which is focused on the history and hauntings of the King’s Head theatre, where he is co-artistic director. Though patchy in places, it’s a fright-full pleasure to watch.
The Haunting of Susan A is a lecture, a ghost story, and a love letter to this crumbly old stage. Ravenhill opens the show with snippets of history, imagining which famous people might have stopped by for a pint, whose blood might be caked into these walls. When he is interrupted by an actor itching to tell her tale of a past performance on this stage, the story splits in two. With Ravenhill banished to his seat, Suzanne Ahmet takes charge.
Vibrating with fear and fury, the production starts to hum. Jo Underwood’s lighting design creates a beautiful, eerie glow as Ahmet tells us a ghost story. A real one, she insists. Nerves build as the production toys with the theatre’s old and faulty lighting desk, dangling the constant threat of the room plunging into total darkness. In the corner, a leak causes an irregular drip drip drip into a metal bucket; low budget, high drama.
Ravenhill’s history is interesting and Ahmet’s story is tense, but the two strands fight for stage time awkwardly. The distinction between their performance styles jars; it’s clear she’s an actor and he’s not. This might change over the show’s run, but as they argue, you can hear one waiting for the other to interrupt.
By putting the theatre’s past as the centre of the story, acting becomes a form of haunting, and this is where the show really finds its feet. More than a ghoulish horror or a historical lecture, this is an ode to the space, to the tales told here over the years, and to the simple power of making an audience cower with nothing more than the terrible, tangible fear of a hand hovering over your shoulder. The stomach-deep tug willing you to turn around. The all-consuming fear of what will happen when you do.
At the King’s Head, London, until 26 June
