Review: Ghost Stories at Nottingham Theatre Royal

When a stage show comes with a warning it certainly piques your interest - and Ghost Stories is just that production.

‘Are you brave enough to book’ and ‘Ghost Stories contains moments of extreme shock and tension’ says the press release, along with the ominous warning ‘we strongly advise those of a nervous disposition to think very seriously before attending’.

Well, I was brave enough to go along when the show came to Nottingham’s Theatre Royal this week (running until Saturday) and I can confirm it is definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Everything - and I mean everything- about this production is carefully designed to set the audience on edge, build up the tension and scare. The audience is literally jumping out of their seats from the very first second to the last.

Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s production was a huge West End hit and has become something of a cult classic with a reputation for terrifying its audiences.

It starts tamely enough with sceptic Professor Goodman (Dan Tetsell) attempting to debunk the paranormal. In doing so he invesitagates three apparent hauntings - and so the scare-fest begins.

The first is night-watchman Tony Matthews (David Cardy) on duty in an abandoned warehouse where, one night, strange things start to happen. This is followed by a teenager (Eddie Loodmer-Elliott) whose car breaks down in the early hours in a forest. Finally, we meet Mike Priddle (Clive Mantle) a successful trader awaiting the birth of his first child and with an apparently haunted nursery.

Each of these stories take Professor Goodman down a rabbit hole, increasingly testing the limit of his rational thought.

The stories are scary enough, but it is the staging of them that sets this production apart from other shows about the paranormal.

From the clever sets to the use of lighting and the constant eerie music playing in the background, the tension is always building. You know something is going to happen but you don’t know what. Then, out of nowhere, a sudden action has you leaping out of your seat, heart racing.

And then the building of the tension starts again.

So often shows do not live up to their pre-show hype. Ghost Stories is not one of them - the warning to those of a nervous disposition is defintely well-founded and should be heeded.

It’s well worth a watch but are you brave enough to book?