Theatre review: Ghost Stories

For his final season at the Lyric Hammersmith Sean Holmes returns to the biggest commercial hit of his time there - Ghost Stories went on to have a couple of West End runs, international productions and a film adaptation – reviving the production he co-directed with its writers Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. That means it’s the same production I saw when it premiered in 2010 so technically I could call this a re-review, but nine years is probably enough time to say I’m seeing it with fresh eyes. Having said that, I remembered a lot of detail, probably refreshed in my memory when I saw the film version. Which is fun, but the stage remains where this story works best: Simon Lipkin takes over the role originally played by Nyman himself, as parapsychologist Professor Goodman gives a lecture on ghosts, looking at paranormal tales from the earliest legends to the newest websites collecting “ghost” photos, and showing as he goes how they’re actually the mind’s eye seeing what it wants to see.

Theatre review: Strangers in Between

Trafalgar Studio 2 has, unsurprisingly given its size, carved out a niche as a venue for transferring shows that did well on the fringe to somewhere a bit more central. The Finborough and Old Red Lion have been regular visitors and now the King’s Head takes a turn with Australian playwright Tommy Murphy’s Strangers in Between. Shane (Roly Botha) is 19 but both looks and acts young for his age, having grown up gay in a remote town best known for its prison, which houses a couple of notorious recent criminals. He’s fled his abusive older brother and turned up in Sydney’s King’s Cross district, known as a dodgy area but soon feeling safer for him than his home town. Still getting used to being open about his sexuality, he soon finds a couple of mentors in camp father figure Peter (Stephen Connery-Brown) and potential romantic interest Will (Dan Hunter.)