Ghost Stories: Review

It isn’t horror’s job to be kind to you. It goes to the very extremes of negative emotions. Fear and paranoia are in charge of a horror story, and with Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s Ghost Stories they have a very tight grip.

The premise is that parapsychologist Professor Goodman (Dan Tetsell) presents a lecture that provides a fair and balanced examination on three ghost stories recounted to him. He invites the audience to think about what scares us and to examine the authenticity of the accounts he has recorded. This is the framing device that takes us through the show.

So complete is the journey through fear, that I’m still a little bit shaky today. Everything from effectively designed and well-executed set by Jon Bausor, disturbing trickster special effects by Scott Penrose and the spine-tingling sound design by Nick Manning has you in flight or flight mode, ready to crap it at any moment.

The three accounts given to the smug Goodman are told by characters that we so know are gonna get it – salt-of-the earth bigot Tony (David Cardy), oddball creepy teenager (Eddie Loodmer-Elliot) and big rich show off Mike (Clive Mantle). The superb storytellers, combined with the production value, make for a terrifying experience. At points, I practically jumped out of myself. I couldn’t even pretend not to be spooked as I was so insecure in not knowing what may come. Alongside this, I was fervently and pointlessly preoccupied with the two empty seats in front of me awaiting something to bob up quickly and grab me. This turned out to be nothing more than two empty seats in front of me. My paranoia was at level 10 on the trust-nothing-and-no-one scale due to the fact my disbelief was suspended somewhere way beyond my reach.

We are impressed by ingenuity as theatre audiences, but once we work out the conventions, we are then likely to anticipate. But due to great direction by Sean Holmes, meticulous set planning, lighting tricks and alarmingly good sound scapes we could not predict nor assume.

I felt closer to the audience in fear than I ever do in elation and the clever ways that Nyman and Dyson have written the piece plays on horror tropes from film and short story, but really understands what a live show can do to further enhance the fear factor.

It is as if campfire stories are given the three dimensions the story narrative deserves and your senses are on high alert from the very start. It is the first time that I had thought theatre can be more effective to present a horror story than film.

Though the stories contained in the show are pitch perfect in their narratives, I felt that some of the jokes and story devices are a bit out of tune for current audiences and are not aging well. But I can’t tell you what those bits are because overall I want you to go as it’s a great piece and well worth experiencing.

If you don’t enjoy being frightened out of your wits though – don’t go.

Ghost Stories is at Lowry, Salford from 25 February to 1 March 2025.