Review: 2:22 A Ghost Story at Newcastle Theatre Royal

“… play which moves you and stays with you…”

2:22 A Ghost Story by Danny Robins, Newcastle Theatre Royal

By Jennifer Burkinshaw

Scalp creeps and jump scares abound from start to finish, the audience shrieking and gripping each other, often before a laughter release, in Danny Robins’ intelligent ghost story. Or is it a ghost story? Do you believe? is the hook until close to the end.

In a production that depends heavily on visuals, there’s lots to look at even before the opening in Anna Fleischle’s curtain-less set. We’re in a partly renovated Victorian living room with its incongruous mix of modern kitchen, huge patio doors, high ceiling and stained-glass hallway door. Above this door is the focal point of the whole plot – the digital clock we’re compelled to keep checking as it counts down to 2.22 or whirrs round out of control. The startling, electronic red is picked up in huge outline on the stage in blackouts for scene shifts, sometimes preceded by searing white light and screams; Lucy Carter’s lighting and Ian Dickinson’s sound are so crucial for the story. An essential part of any ghost story, the screams are often attributed to urban foxes in the garden, or later on, a storm. Most chilling of all, of course, are unexplained shrieks, though occasionally they do feel a little like a cheap trick. Not so, Chris Fisher’s illusions – another vital part of the stage craft for this production. 

A ticking clock is, of course, a known device for creating tension as time runs out. In a couple of places,  keeping track of time backfires as a couple of scenes feel lagging during a dinner party for four which we know from early on has to last some six hours! Shvorne Marks’ Jenny, however, our viewpoint character, holds the stage compellingly from first to last. In a quiet opening, a prologue almost, she’s painting a door frame in the early hours of the morning, leading up to 2.22 when she hears the noises that have been haunting her – the audience catches them with her through the baby monitor.  We then flash forward to the dinner party that is the action of the play.  Jenny’s is the ghost experience which is more chilling the more we hear about it, not least because the footsteps she’s been hearing nightly at 2.22 are in her baby’s bedroom, accompanied by a man’s crying which her mother has also heard.

Tensions between the four characters, at the dinner which becomes a vigil, are one of the main intrigues of the script – between the two married couples, between two old friends/flames and between James Bye’s Sam and Grant Kilburn’s Ben who, meeting for the first time this evening, lock horns – sceptic and believer, physicist and builder, monkey brain and lizard brain.  Ben claims he’s spiritual and his mum is an angel looking down on him; his and Sam’s polarised beliefs about ghosts provide both much of the humour and debate about spirits and hauntings, Sam stating that ‘Ghosts are the easy answer’, a distraction from the fact that life is pointless and death final.

Ben, in his smart, sockless outfit, is a likeable, watchable Cockney wideboy who grew up in the area where Jenny and Sam are renovating their home – ‘stripping out everything like in every house around here that all end up with the same soulless look.’  Ben is in an unlikely relationship with Natalie Casey’s Californian psychotherapist, Lauren. At times, we suspect each of them of being behind the strange goings-on in Jenny and Sam’s house: Danny Robins points out, ‘a ghost sighting is a detective story,’ and as such, this play too teems with red herrings.

This production of such strong performances and stagecraft is founded,  of course, on Danny Robin’s thought-provoking script, including many memorable ideas and lines, including that not love but fear is the strongest of all emotions, and questioning whether we would risk our lives to save our loved ones. His programme notes conclude, ‘Whether we believe in them or not, ghosts are society’s buffer between life and death.’

2.22 A Ghost Story constantly shifts in tone, with some amusing questions, through Sam, about why, if ghosts do exist, they wear clothes, and why there aren’t vastly more of them. Ultimately though, this is a play which moves you and stays with you, including the extended metaphor of ghosts mirroring refugees, separated from their families and forced away from their homes into unfamiliar territory.

The final-minute twist sends you right back to the start – you digest the action slowly afterwards, gradually unravelling clues and explanations you missed all the way through. 2.22 A Ghost Story had us thinking and talking about it long after the performance. The only solution is to see it a second time.

2:22 A Ghost Story plays at Newcastle Theatre Royal until Saturday 18 April. Tickets are available here.

Jennifer Burkinshaw has loved live theatre ever since she can remember. She has taught English and Drama in various places, including Paris, and directed productions. Since then, she’s published two young adult novels which she take into schools for writing workshops. Her debut, Igloo, won the grand prize at Eyelands International Book awards 2023. Her thriller, Happiness Seeker, was published a year later. Both stories were inspired by places she knows and loves: the French Alps and Morecambe Bay. Jennifer continues to enjoy the mountains, seaside and her growing family – sadly not all at the same time!