Reviewed by James Karas
The Woman in Black is a play adapted by Stephen Mallatratt from a novel of the same name by Susan Hill. It opened in Scarborough, England in 1987 and later transferred to London where it played for 33 years. That makes it the second-longest run of a non-musical play after The Mousetrap. It is now playing at the CAA Theatre in Toronto for a lot less than 33 years but will be there until January 4, 2026.
If you are a fan of ghost stories, line up for a ticket to the show. The Woman in Black has no murder, no blood, a few deaths, with a mystery at its heart and like all ghost stories, it is intended to frighten the bejesus out of the audience. The program lists a cast of three actors, David Acton as Arthur Kipps, Ben Porter as Arthur Kipps/the Actor and James Byng as The Actor. Ony two actors are on the stage for the performance but we do get some shadowy glimpses of a woman in black and that at least satisfies us as to the presence of the all-important ghost of the play.
A note in the program explains that “The roles of Arthur Kipps and the actor are shared between three actors in rep.”
The play is not an enactment of a ghost story but the telling of an experience with a ghost that happened many years before what we see on stage. Arthur Kipps, a middle-aged English lawyer, opens the play by reading from a manuscript, haltingly and badly, “It was nine thirty on Christmas Eve. As I was crossing the long hall…”
He is boring and comical in his attempt at narrative and a young Actor (Ben Porter) interrupts him, bounds down the aisle and starts instructing him about speaking to an audience from the stage. Kipps protests that he is not an actor but The Actor promises to make an Irving, (the famous nineteenth century actor) of him. He will train him in public speaking. The scene gets laughs.
David Acton and Ben Porter in
The Woman in Black.
Kipps wants to tell a story that he lived through when he was young. It had a terrible effect on his life and he believes that if he tells it to his family and friends, he will be able to exorcise the curse on him or the ghost of a dead person that has ruined his life.
The boisterous, self-assured Actor and the diffident Kipps agree to switch roles. The young actor will speak the part of the young Kipps and the latter will play all the people he meets during his story. No small task because you need the fingers on both hands to count the number of people he runs into.
Kipps is assigned by his boss, Mr. Bentley to go to go to a town in north England to administer the estate of the recently deceased Mrs. Drablow. She lived in Eel Marsh House, a grand mansion that could be approached only be a causeway during low tide and was well off. No children. Just a recluse. Everyone who hears of Eel March shudders and does not want to talk about it.
Kipps is warned about the house but he goes there and finds creepy noises, locked rooms and an atmosphere that would bring horror to the hardiest soul. He goes through Mrs. Drablow’s papers and finds correspondence between her and Jennet who had a child out of wedlock. She gives up her child to Mrs. Drablow and her husband Morgan. All of this information is given to us amid bone-chilling sounds, noises, howling winds and the shadowy appearance of a woman in black.
But we know that this is a reenactment, studied and rehearsed by Kipps and the Actor many years later. It is told as if it were happening in the present and as if Kipps and The Actor are living through it and not in the reenactment of actions that happened a long time ago. The sounds, the slamming doors and all the paraphernalia of the presence of a ghost are read from the script that Kipps wrote. Is Mallatratt pulling off a coup de théâtre and turning a narration of a harrowing experience by a young man into a harrowing experience for the same man in much later life and an actor who helps him tell the story?
At the beginning we are told that we will imagine all the incidents and there are so many that it would be impossible to show them on stage. The story is told by the two actors with sidelines for explanation and narration.
David Acton plays the numerous people that Kipps meets in Mrs. Drablow’s murky world with panache and quick changes of expression. Kudos to Ben Porter for a fine job as the energetic actor who gets a lot more than he bargained for.
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The Woman in Black by Stephen Mallatratt adapted from the novel by Susan Hill continues until January 4, 2026, at the CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge St. Toronto, Ontario. www.mirvish.com/
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