The Woman in Black (play)
| The Woman in Black | |
|---|---|
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| Written by |
Susan Hill Stephen Mallatratt (adaptation) |
| Date premiered | 1987 (Scarborough) 1989 (London) |
| Genre | Horror story, ghost story |
| Setting | Eastern Britain |
The Woman in Black is a 1987 stage play, adapted by Stephen Mallatratt. The play is based on the book of the same name, which was written in 1983 by English author Susan Hill. The play is currently being produced by PW Productions, led by Peter Wilson. It is notable for only having two actors perform the whole play. It was first performed at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, in 1987. The production opened in London's West End in 1989 and is still being performed there, becoming the second longest-running non-musical play in West End history, after The Mousetrap.
The book follows the story of Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, as he journeys to the small market town of Crythin Gifford to attend the funeral of a client, Mrs Alice Drablow. At the funeral, he sees a young woman with a wasted face, dressed all in black, standing in the churchyard.
Bemused by the villagers' reluctance to speak of the woman in black, Arthur goes to Eel Marsh House, Mrs. Drablow's former abode, an old building in the middle of a marsh, which is cut off from the mainland at high tide. Sorting through Mrs Drablow's papers, he finds a box of letters, and ultimately discovers the dreadful secret of the Woman in Black – to his own terrible cost.
The plot remains faithful to Hill's book, but adds an extra dimension of a play within a play.
(This is the Belgian version of the play)
The play opens in an empty Victorian theatre, where an old Arthur Kipps is reading aloud from a manuscript of his story. A young actor whom he hired to help dramatise the story, enters and criticises him for his poor delivery. After an argument, they agree to perform the story, with the Actor playing a younger Kipps, and Kipps himself playing all the other characters and narrating the play. When they run through the play, however, things begin to go terribly wrong.
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