Five of the Best - Horror Plays
- charlietant
- Oct 23
- 9 min read
'I'm here to collect a few books,' I said, slipping my library card towards the desk clerk.
Without lifting his eyes, he typed my name into his desktop and his face suddenly froze.
'Excuse me,' he said, excusing himself.
He trotted off for a few words with a lady, behind, who peeked out at me sheepishly before quickly darting her head away again.
'You're sure you want these?' he asked, returning to the desk.
'Yes, of course'.
With a final encouraging nod from his timid lady-colleague, he cautiously lifted a rusty key from an uppermost hook and disappeared through a rear-door. His footsteps gradually descended into the echoey bowels of the library's vaults until all sound was gone. There followed the distant noise of chains being disturbed and then a gargled scream.
After an accelerated sprint back up the staircase, he emerged with a stack of books in his hands - his face ashen but an air of quiet accomplishment in his eyes.
'Be sure to return these before the library closes,' he panted. 'Or else there may well be...consequences.'
I found myself a quiet corner and peeled back the top cover...
Horror has been a popular theatrical genre for centuries. Early stage classics like William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606) and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1594) - featuring witches and devils - were likely written with terror in mind. Fear-inducing literary works including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw have all received successful stage adaptations.
With the genre currently thriving elsewhere, it's a shame that horror plays remain comparatively rare on our stages today - successful horror plays, even rarer. A few notable failures are glaring examples of the potential pitfalls - Carrie the Musical (co-produced with the Royal Shakespeare Company) suffered one of the shortest runs in Broadway history in 1988, closing less than a week after its ill-received premiere. A West End production of The Exorcist didn't fare much better 30 years later - even with Sir Ian McKellen lending his voice for the demon.
More recently, rumours of Hollywood star Ben Stiller making his London stage debut in a theatre adaptation of The Shining in 2023 strangely failed to materialise - perhaps he was frightened off by the aforementioned flops.
For those hungry for a fresh horror movie theatre spin-off, you'll be pleased to hear there's a stage version of Paranormal Activity soon to arrive in the West End - just in time for Christmas! (Perhaps let's forego the usual pantomime in favour of something different this year, grandma?)
In this post, we look at a few standouts from the genre - five plays that succeeded in provoking terror in audiences rather than ridicule...
The Vampire - J.R. Planché (1820)
'Death binds them not - from form to form they fleet,
And though the cheek be pale, and glazed the eye,
Such is their wondrous art, the hapless victim
Blindly adores, and drops into their grasp,
Like birds when gazed on by the basilisk.'
The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles debuted in London on 9th August 1820. Intriguingly, it was staged at the Lyceum Theatre - the same venue that Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, would go on to manage half-a-century later.
The Vampire was a stage adaptation of John William Poldori's short story The Vampyre (1819), itself inspired by Lord Byron's unfinished work Fragment of a Novel. Byron's original text was conceived as a result of the famous ghost writing contest involving himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley - the same challenge that gave birth to Frankenstein.
Byron's tale was among the first known instances of a vampire able to function in modern society in disguise. Poldori's subsequent adaptation, The Vampyre, was similarly pioneering in romanticising the vampire as a wooing sophisticate, reviving itself with the blood of its female conquests.
The play is set in the Scottish Isles - opening in a cave filled with tombs, at night. (The first fright comes when the vampire's spirit suddenly darts out of his grave.) The prevailing vampire-lore is established by Ariel, Spirit of the Air, in the prelude:
'...they must wed some fair and virtuous maiden,
Whom they do after kill, and from her veins
Drain eagerly the purple stream of life,
Which horrid draught alone hath power to save them
From swift extermination.'
A gothic melodrama interlaced with songs, the plot involves Lord Ruthven - a vampire in the guise of a nobleman - seeking the hand of his former employer's daughter. Unless he marries before dawn, his life will be extinguished.
It calls for a demanding staging - with scenes involving the aforementioned tomb-filled cavern, waves into which a body is pushed and, for the final scene, a chapel with 'a large Gothic window through which the Moon is seen going down.' A trap-door known today as 'the vampire trap' was specially designed for the play - allowing the vampire to make swift entrances and exits through the stage floor.
The final stage direction offers perhaps the best insight into its spectacular stage-effects: 'A terrific peal of thunder is heard. [...] A thunderbolt strikes Ruthven, who immediately vanishes through the ground.'
Unlikely to be revived today, The Vampyre was a great success when it first played and certainly - though perhaps indirectly - inspired Bram Stoker's later gothic masterpiece.
The Ghost Train - Arnold Ridley (1925)
'It will be here soon. Just as it all happened before...the scream of the brakes, the shriek of the whistle. Louder, louder, louder! So loud that the noise nearly kills one. It's awful, awful...'
Arnold Ridley is a name familiar to many thanks to playing the role of Private Godfrey in the enduring British sitcom Dad's Army. He was also a keen playwright responsible for over thirty plays - the most successful being The Ghost Train.
A world removed from the extravagant staging necessary for The Vampyre, Ridley's Ghost Train endures as a popular play with amateur companies today thanks to its relatively undemanding set requirements. Debuting in London at St Martin's Theatre on 23rd November 1925, its original run lasted over 600 performances.
Set in the small general waiting-room at Fal Vale, 'a wayside station on the South Cornwall Joint Railway', a group of characters are stranded overnight after missing their train connection. It's pouring with rain outside and the nearest alternative shelter, a farm, is five miles away. With a ragged assortment including a pair of newly-weds and an elderly lady with a caged parrot, it seems a perfect setup for a farce. However, things take a more frightening turn when it's revealed the station is haunted...
It transpires that there was a horrific train crash at Fal Vale on this same date twenty years ago, killing eight people. Since then, a ghost train has been known to tear through the station at night 'with all the brakes on and whistles a-blowin'.' The locals believe that anyone who sees the phantom apparition will die. When the superstitious stationmaster is suddenly discovered dead, the characters each begin to worry about their own fate.
An air of suspense and intrigue keeps the tension taut throughout, phantom noises outside and faintly-perceived sights holding the characters in a permanent state of unrest. Ridley scatters moments of humour throughout the play to diffuse the over-riding tension but doesn't resist the dark, at one point plunging the stage into pitch-black when the gas fire goes out.
As with any supernatural situation, the writer has a crucial choice of whether to resolve the story with a rationalistic explanation or accept the paranormal. Unfortunately, in this case, Ridley dispels all mystery with a neat ending that - whilst clever - sadly destroys any residual chilling impact. Nonetheless, it's an excellent premise for a play, with a fine balance of laughter and thrills.
Listen to a 1988 BBC Radio adaptation of 'The Ghost Train' here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS_fq9ii4Po
The Exorcism - Don Taylor (1972)
'Perhaps this is the end now. Just the four of us, and time, and silence.'
The Exorcism began life as a TV-play in 1972 before being adapted for the stage by its original author, Don Taylor. Premiering at the Comedy Theatre (now Harold Pinter Theatre) in 1975, tragedy struck when one of its stars - Mary Ure - was discovered dead within hours of its triumphant opening. The Exorcism has since held a reputation as a cursed play.
The action takes place on Christmas Day, with a couple preparing to host dinner with friends at their newly-furnished weekend country cottage. It's quickly established that the location is very remote, 'so completely isolated - no other house in sight for miles.'
Unfortunately, the evening begins to turn sour when they sit down to eat. The Bordeaux tastes like blood and the turkey causes poisonous side-effects. When the lights go out and the phone line goes dead, it becomes evident that the house itself is rebelling against them. Added to that, Margaret - the hostess - has seen the skeleton of a child lying on their bed...
A running theme of capitalist-guilt indicates the allegory at the heart of the story, the socio-economic disparity of the modern world - never more evident than during the festive season. The play doesn't contain an 'exorcism' in the traditional sense but a spirit seeking vengeance upon a privileged corner of society turning a blind eye to the misfortunes of the economically deprived. The house itself is the host rejecting its inhabitants.
Unlike The Ghost Train, the supernatural element is never compromised - if anything, the moral premise lends an added weight to the horror of the characters' predicament. It is a guilt that most of us unfortunately have to face up to.
The Woman in Black - Susan Hill / Stephen Mallatratt (1987)
'The expression on her face...desperate, yearning malevolence...filled me with indescribable loathing and fear. And she vanished in a way that no living human being could possibly manage to do. I did not believe in ghosts.'
When Susan Hill wrote the original novel of The Woman in Black (1983), she drew direct inspiration from giants of literary horror Henry James and M.R. James. The premise is familiar territory - a sceptic invited to spend time at a remote location, alone inside a cursed abode. Adapted for the stage in 1987, it played for over 30 years in the West End and remains the second longest-running play in the history of the London stage.
The genius of Stephen Mallatratt's stage adaptation is its embracing of the theatre - ostensibly involving just two actors. Specified as taking place in a small Victorian theatre, the play starts as a rehearsed dramatisation of a character's personal recollections. This develops to involve the use of recorded sound, props and stage furniture to flesh out the performance. The audience is subtly drawn into the reality of the story, sharing the same haunted space as the characters - the spectral figure of the eponymous Woman in Black herself even makes her first entrance through the audience. Hence, none of us are safe.
Sound is also used to nerve-shredding effect - the sudden piercing sound of a child's scream, a tinkling music box, the incessant thudding of an upstairs rocking-chair...
The climax, involving the revelation of a curse, provides both a perfect denouement to the story and a residual fear that will linger with the audience long after they've left the auditorium.
It's a remarkable play, and a rare example of a theatre adaptation unequivocally improving upon its original source material. Catch it on tour, if you dare!
'The Woman in Black' is currently on tour in the UK: https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/the-woman-in-black/
Ghost Stories - Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman (2009)
'Think of a moment in your life that fills you with absolute dread...I'll bet when you close your eyes and think about that terrible moment, you can remember every detail of it, as if it's happening right now.'
Such was the looming shadow cast by The Woman in Black, co-writers Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman specifically sought a premise that would escape comparison. They set out to write a horror play that would be contemporary and as frightening as the best modern horror film.
The result was a portmanteau, conceptually inspired by the Amicus anthology films of the 70's and - the undisputed titan of the genre - Ealing Studios' Dead of Night (1945). The play involves three supernatural tales woven into a lecture conducted by Philip Goodman, a professor of parapsychology.
In kinship with The Woman in Black, the authors use the live space to their advantage. Not only does the main actor make his first entrance through the audience, the atmosphere of the play is established before the lights go down - the script stipulating that ticket-holders enter the auditorium through dark tunnels 'filled with a dreadful soundscape.'
The play is also introduced with a cautionary announcement: 'Please be aware that once Ghost Stories has commenced, should you leave the auditorium for any reason you will not be readmitted.' All of this is carefully engineered to provoke a sense of fear and trepidation, a questioning of whether we are ready for whatever we are about to see...
The three spooky stories, strictly more 'paranormal' than 'ghost' stories, all take place at night and in typically nightmarish locations - a nightwatchman's cabin, a remote country road, a nursery. Professor Goodman, the narrator, is the obligatory sceptic offering us a a window into the tales, having procured interviews with each subject under the pretence of scientific research.
Without spoiling it, the ending works in providing an intelligent and frighteningly bleak resolution. If the supernatural element is perhaps compromised by this, as with The Exorcism, it certainly doesn't diminish the severity of the impact.
Perhaps too much indebted to scary films to be a wholly satisfying stage play, Ghost Stories nevertheless succeeds in providing a more modern horror experience in the theatre - very distinct from the antiquated, gothic dwellings of The Woman in Black.
'Ghost Stories' is playing at the Peacock Theatre until 8th November: https://www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/ghost-stories/
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