David Acton and Ben Porter in The Woman in Black (Photo courtesy of PW Productions & Pemberley Productions)
PW Productions & Pemberley Productions/The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, adapted by Stephen Mallatratt, directed by Robin Herford, tour director Antony Eden, CAA Theatre, closes Jan. 4. Tickets here.
Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 novella has become one of the most enduring theatrical ghost stories of the modern era.
Background
Premiering in Scarborough in 1987 as a modest two-hander created to stretch a shrinking budget, it was never meant to become a phenomenon.
Yet two years later, the play transferred to London’s West End, where it remained for 33 years. It survived shifting theatrical tastes, recessions, and the rise of high tech spectacles, relying entirely on suggestion, imagination, and the craft of two actors. Its longevity alone speaks to its extraordinary power.
The Story
The play does take a bit of time to kick in.
David Acton plays Arthur Kipps, an elderly solicitor desperate to exorcise the memory of what he encountered decades earlier at Eel Marsh House. He has hired an actor, Ben Porter, to help him in his storytelling skills to an audience of family and friends. When he proves hopeless, the actor takes over the role of the younger Kipps with the older man playing all the other characters.
The Young Kipps is sent out to a remote part of England to settle the affairs of a reclusive widow and from the start he realizes that there is something very wrong with the way the town folk react to mention of the widow and her island home where, of course, Kipps does ultimately encounter the malevolent ghost, the Woman in Black, and the curse she carries.
Ben Porter in The Woman in Black (Photo courtesy of PW Productions & Pemberley Productions)
The Acting
Acton delivers a tightly coiled performance, moving between humour, restraint, and a grief so internalized that it seems to weigh physically on his body. His Kipps is a man terrified not by ghosts, but by the resurgence of memory itself.
Opposite him, Ben Porter plays The Actor, who assumes the role of Young Kipps and drives the narrative forward with energy, clarity, and an impeccable sense of pacing. Porter’s shifts between character and narrator are seamless, and his command of tension allows the production to move from dry rehearsal comedy into heart pounding suspense.
The Original Aesthetic
Directed originally by Robin Herford, the production retains the signature staging that made the show a classic — a bare, echoing performance space, minimal props, and a reliance on the innate storytelling power of theatre.
It is a production that trusts its audience. Rather than overwhelming us with effects, it hands us the tools of fear and allows us to build the terror ourselves.
The real sorcery of The Woman in Black, however, lies in its aesthetic. The production uses light and shadow as its primary instruments.
Designer Anshuman Bhatia’s lighting sculpts the stage into narrow lanes of visibility surrounded by vast regions of darkness. A single lantern can transform into a beacon of dread; a faint silhouette at the upstage door can take on horrifying implications. The design draws on the Victorian ghost story tradition, where fear emerges from what is withheld rather than what is shown.
Sebastian Frost’s sound plays an equally vital role — the distant pony and trap, the sudden cries, the shifting creaks within the theatre walls. The production knows how to weaponise silence as effectively as noise, creating a constant tension between anticipation and release.
David Acton and Ben Porter in The Woman in Black (Photo courtesy of PW Productions & Pemberley Productions)
Fear as Psychology
What makes the piece so compelling today is how strongly it resonates with contemporary audiences accustomed to digital spectacle.
In a theatrical landscape dominated by projection, amplification, and visual overload, The Woman in Black feels startlingly pure. It reminds us that fear is a psychological response, not a technical achievement.
Watching the production, I could feel the audience pulled tighter and tighter into the storytelling. People leaned forward involuntarily; others stiffened at the edges of their seats. Gasps rippled through the theatre at moments when nothing more occurred than a shift in light or the briefest glimpse of a figure crossing the shadows.
The Woman herself — silent, spectral, and implacable — is deployed sparingly, which makes her appearances all the more devastating. There is a famous quality to this production: audiences often swear they saw her in places where no actor stood. Such is the strength of the illusion Mallatratt and Herford created. The play does not merely show us a haunting; it induces the conditions of one.
The Power of Imagination
In the end, what lingers is not the shock of the final moments but the slow, tightening fear built through imagination. Toronto audiences are fortunate to encounter this definitive staging, a rare reminder that the most powerful special effect in theatre remains the human mind.
The Woman in Black proves, yet again, that terror thrives in darkness — and in the stories we tell ourselves when the lights begin to fade.
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Paula Citron is a Toronto-based freelance arts journalist and broadcaster who hosts her own website, paulacitron.ca. For over 25 years, she was senior dance writer for The Globe and Mail, associate editor of Opera Canada magazine, arts reviewer for Classical 96.3 FM, and dance previews contributor to Toronto Life magazine. She has been a guest lecturer for various cultural groups and universities, particularly on the role of the critic/reviewer, and has been a panellist on COC podcasts. Before assuming a full-time journalism career, Ms. Citron was a member of the drama department of the Claude Watson School for the Arts.
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