This spooky and brilliantly economical play written and directed by Jamie Armitage does exactly what it says on the tin, insinuating the looming terror and sudden shocks of a horror tale directly into the audience’s aural cavities. While we watch personable George Blagden (Versailles/Vikings) on stage as a young actor recording a ghost story for an audiobook, interacting in a studio with a dummy head studded with microphones, his voice is relayed to us through headphones.
So if he whispers in the head’s left ear, we hear it in our left ear. If he circles behind it, we hear him behind us, even though we can see him in front of us. Creaks, clanks and a whispering voice – scream-king Mark Gatiss, uncredited - leak directly into our skulls, while an ominous heartbeat seems periodically to throb through the very fabric of the theatre. Jonathan Livingstone’s blokey engineer, in the windowed control room behind Blagden, is mostly shrouded in darkness, but sudden blasts of light and bursts of sound reveal… well, that would be telling. Suffice to say it’s very, very creepy.
