Film Noir is a popular genre, and the phenomenally successful play, The Woman in Black, translates this to the stage. The play originally took to the boards in a British seaside town in 1987, and received such rave reviews that it eventually reached the West End two years later, where it has become entrenched as a crowd-puller, its fame spreading to productions in America and even Tokyo.
The Woman in Black is dark and mysterious, evoking a lonely, eerie situation in which a junior solicitor is instructed to attend the funeral of a Mrs Alice Drablow. Alice lived a solitary existence in Eel Marsh House on a windswept salt marsh, where the young solicitor feels uneasy as he comes across the figure of a tragic young woman dressed in black. The play is retrospective, having Kipps, the solicitor, relate his tale as an old man, who is still trying to come to terms with the past.
Spine-chilling and spooky, The Woman in Black, adapted by Stephen Mallatrat from a novel by Susan Hill, is likely to raise goose-bumps on your arms and linger in your mind for a long time. You’re bound to check the cupboards when you get home!
