Theatre review: It Walks Around The House At Night

Joe (George Naylor) is an out-of-work actor with a thing for posh boys, who's working in a bar when one of the regulars offers him a well-paid acting job - of sorts. David's nieces will be visiting the family's country pile for a week, and he's promised them an appearance from a resident ghost with a regular routine: It Walks Around The House At Night. One of the things about Tim Foley's ghost story that lets you know you're in (un)safe hands is the way he immediately wrong-foots the audience's mental image of what that title means - never setting foot inside the building, the ghost literally walks around the house, circling it in the surrounding dark woods. Joe is put up at a nearby lodge, asked to leave it only when dark falls and it's time to follow his assigned route through the trees.

But right from the first night's walk he starts to hear noises suggesting he's being followed, and things only get worse when he returns to the lodge, his night's sleep being disrupted by scuttling noises, sinister shadows and the fridge door opening by itself to spill out eerie light. As his week goes on, the days seem to get shorter and shorter until the dark is all that's left.

The show is not quite the monologue it appears to be, and where most stage ghost stories will sneak in an uncredited cast member to provide some jump scares, It Walks Around The House At Night does credit Oliver Baines as The Dancer (among other, more shadowy roles.) I was torn on the scene where the voice of Paul Hilton catches us up on a lot of exposition and the background to what's really in the woods and lodge while Baines dances in flashback - on the one hand it's an unexpected change of pace and style that gives a whole new flavour to the story, on the other it does puncture a lot of the creepy tension Naylor has been building up.

But that aside Foley's story is expertly told, and the writer seems to have an instinctive grasp of how horror, comedy and sex work together: The play is consistently funny, controlling how and when the audience gets to build tension then release it (a play featuring a haunted fridge could never take itself entirely seriously.) Meanwhile sex is as much a motivator as money in why Joe sticks around in what increasingly looks like a dangerous situation: He's hoping to hook up with David, and his nighttime hauntings mean he spends much of the play scurrying around in his underwear chased by shadows. This fondness for posh boys also feeds into a political theme that becomes increasingly apparent as the story goes on, as those with money and class advantages pass on horrors to those without them.

The shadows feel as fresh as anything else despite horror theatre being in a resurgence at the moment, and the technical aspects of Neil Bettles' production are another highlight: As well as the lighting Joshua Pharo is responsible for the video design which is sparingly but effectively used (although given the amount of references to Paragon Hall being a black and white Tudor building, the fact that the image in the projections doesn't match that annoyed me.)

But Pete Malkin's sound design gets all the right cracks, creaks and footsteps in, Bettles and Tom Robbins' set hides all manner of secrets, and the practical effects are impressively slick: Naylor gets clipped in and out of a bungee cord at lightning speed, and a coup de théâtre jump-scare I'll describe in a footnote to keep spoilers out of the main review* is as gracefully choreographed as anything the Dancer performs. Ending as it started, with another twist on what the title might actually mean, in any fair theatrical landscape where stunt-casting didn't trump quality, It Walks Around The House At Night would be a bigger hit than 2:22 A Ghost Story.

It Walks Around The House At Night by Time Foley is booking until the 28th of March at Southwark Playhouse Borough's Large Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

*in one of the haunted fridge's appearances, the door opens, a rat rushes out of it and scuttles under the bed, where it transforms into the hooded figure that's been haunting the shadows and looms over Joe in bed