The Woman in Black review – a playfully meta ghost romp with heavy-handed jump scares

‘For all the promise of terror, the result is an entertaining but ultimately safe night at the theatre’ … Daniel Macpherson and John Waters in The Woman in Black. Photograph: Justin Nicholas

“Have sympathy for your audience,” Daniel MacPherson says in the opening scene of The Woman in Black and, as far as crowd-pleasing dramaturgical mantras go, it’s not a bad one.

Minutes earlier, his co-star John Waters was alone on the stage reading lines straight out of a book. “It was 9.30 on Christmas Eve …” he mumbles, in a performance that’s dry, monotonous and poorly projected to boot. For a guy who has starred in everything from All Saints to Underbelly, he’s a charisma vacuum on a dull grey stage – right up until a man in the row in front of me starts heckling.