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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

2:22: A Ghost Story review – Cheryl’s West End debut is a thunderous fright night

Cheryl as Jenny in 2:22.
Entertainment value … Cheryl as Jenny in 2:22. Photograph: Helen Murray

Since it opened in 2021, Danny Robins’s supernatural story, with its numerous West End casts, awards and killer twist, has become a well-oiled ghostly machine. It is also becoming a launchpad for singers who fancy treading the boards. First came Lily Allen’s feted tenure; now Cheryl makes her debut in the glare of the West End. As her own X Factor moment, it is respectable enough for a first go, if blunt-edged: big on volume and sudden, thunderous anger.

In fairness, the others are just as shouty. In this haunted-house tale that begins as a comedy of manners, Cheryl convincingly plays rattled new mother Jenny, who is the one who believes the house that she and her husband, Sam (Scott Karim), have bought is haunted. Their friend Lauren (Louise Ford) has come to dinner with her new builder boyfriend Ben (Jake Wood) – who is Mellors to her Lady Chatterley – and the drama’s frights play out over the course of this one night.

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