The Woman in Black at Seattle Rep

I am trying to think of another play that is meant to be scary in the way that a ghost story is, in the way that many movies try to be.  From Poltergeist to Halloween to Rear Window, there are movies that intend to leave you frightened, anxious, and at just the right moment, to make you startle and shout.  The Woman in Black at the Seattle Rep goes after all of those things.  It was so fun!  The audience – me included -- would shriek and then laugh at themselves for being so swept up. 

I can’t recall off the top of my head having that kind of theatrical experience before.  Sure, ghosts accost Hamlet and Macbeth and Scrooge but it’s just not the same.  Those ghosts are not meant to do the same kind of work.  They do more goading than menacing and they don’t really sustain things over time.  They’re more schticky than spooky.

The Woman in Black uses many theatrical storytelling tools to draw you and then grab you.  There’s verbal imagery to conjure marshes and sudden fogs and causeways that appear only at low tide.  There are sounds of waves and creaking floorboards and runaway horse carts.  And above all, there is masterful use of lighting.  Lighting creates an old Victorian house on top of a bluff, eerie hidden rooms behind scrims, and blackouts where you wonder what bad thing might be happening in the dark or what terrible result you might see when the lights come back up.

From the playwright to the designers to the director to the actors, the whole the thing is tightly wound and ready to spring at you.  You’ll love it when it does. 

Correction: I originally wrote "high tide" by mistake and changed it to "low tide" so it actually makes sense. 

Photo by me of the program, obviously.