Ghost Stories Festival Theatre Edinburgh 26th March 2025 Review
Ghost Stories is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh (Wed 26 to Sat 29 March) and if you feel that you yourself have had a supernatural experience in your lifetime, just like ghost stories, or simply just want a fright-night out then this is probably the play for you.
Quite rightly, given the subject matter and nature of this show, audiences and reviewers are asked not to reveal the stories told in this show or its ending (a similar request made long ago for Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap”). This review honours that request.
Ghost Stories is at its heart a very simple play that utilises the very simple story telling format of having no interval, instead having an unbroken performance time of around 90 minutes. This allows for an unbroken narrative arc that never allows the audience’s immersion in these stories to be broken. A little note here, and announced at the beginning of this performance, anyone leaving the auditorium before the end of the show will not be re-admitted.
There is something about telling supernatural stories that is probably as old as mankind gathering around a campfire to listen to them. Often they are simply a story to entertain, sometimes they are a warning and sometimes they are used to instill fear and exert control over people. The ongoing relationship between us and a belief in the supernatural is a complex one and if this audience is anything to judge by, as strongly rooted in our psyche as ever.
In this show, creators/writers Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman have cleverly tapped into that old fear that many people still have of the supernatural (or simply unexplained) and combined it with more contemporary “Ghost Stories” from books, Victorian novels and penny dreadfuls, comic books and of course classic film and television works. This show is not a direct adaptation of any of the above, but more a checklist of the classic elements that we seem to often associate with paranormal activity and re-assembled them into a very simple and often used format of a narrator telling ghost stories.
Here though that narrator is a Professor Goodman (Dan Tetsell), a sceptical paranormal researcher who has, amongst countless other stories, three that refuse to be de-bunked by logical investigation. What is it about these stories by three very different and unconnected people, a night-watchman, Tony Mathews (David Cardy), a teenage boy, Simon Rifkind (Eddie Loodmer-Elliott), and a businessman awaiting the birth of his first child, Mike Priddle (Clive Mantle) that is different? The answer to that question is what this show is all about, but along the way there are more than a few shocks and surprises in store for the audience.
This show needs a performer who is a good story teller to immediately pull an audience into the world of the supernatural/paranormal and ultimately into the world of these three very different stories and Dan Tetsell has this ability. Without his ability to create that atmosphere of always looking for proof, “Ghost Stories” would be just another ghost story.
It is not, however, just the excellent performances of this cast as they re-tell their paranormal encounters that make this show what it is, it is also the very skilful use of physical space, sound, lights and special effects which are a vital part of this performance. Here set and costume designer (Jon Bausor), lighting designer (James Farncombe), sound designer (Nick Manning) and special effects (Scott Penrose) are as much a part of these ghost stories as any of the performers on stage and together they often skilfully use some of the classic techniques of theatre and film to achieve their desired atmospheric effect. The un-credited ingredient, but also vital to this performance is the physical theatre auditorium space itself and if you are going to produce this type of a show then it helps if you have a physical space that so often has its own ghost story to tell.
Will you be on the edge of your seat as these ghost stories use every opportunity to provide the illusion of a very immersive paranormal atmosphere on stage? That of course is going to be a very personal response, but whatever your response, there can be no doubt that this is a very tightly written work that, under the direction of Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman and Sean Holmes, gives its audience a very unusual theatrical experience.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Quite rightly, given the subject matter and nature of this show, audiences and reviewers are asked not to reveal the stories told in this show or its ending (a similar request made long ago for Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap”). This review honours that request.
Ghost Stories is at its heart a very simple play that utilises the very simple story telling format of having no interval, instead having an unbroken performance time of around 90 minutes. This allows for an unbroken narrative arc that never allows the audience’s immersion in these stories to be broken. A little note here, and announced at the beginning of this performance, anyone leaving the auditorium before the end of the show will not be re-admitted.
There is something about telling supernatural stories that is probably as old as mankind gathering around a campfire to listen to them. Often they are simply a story to entertain, sometimes they are a warning and sometimes they are used to instill fear and exert control over people. The ongoing relationship between us and a belief in the supernatural is a complex one and if this audience is anything to judge by, as strongly rooted in our psyche as ever.
In this show, creators/writers Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman have cleverly tapped into that old fear that many people still have of the supernatural (or simply unexplained) and combined it with more contemporary “Ghost Stories” from books, Victorian novels and penny dreadfuls, comic books and of course classic film and television works. This show is not a direct adaptation of any of the above, but more a checklist of the classic elements that we seem to often associate with paranormal activity and re-assembled them into a very simple and often used format of a narrator telling ghost stories.
Here though that narrator is a Professor Goodman (Dan Tetsell), a sceptical paranormal researcher who has, amongst countless other stories, three that refuse to be de-bunked by logical investigation. What is it about these stories by three very different and unconnected people, a night-watchman, Tony Mathews (David Cardy), a teenage boy, Simon Rifkind (Eddie Loodmer-Elliott), and a businessman awaiting the birth of his first child, Mike Priddle (Clive Mantle) that is different? The answer to that question is what this show is all about, but along the way there are more than a few shocks and surprises in store for the audience.
This show needs a performer who is a good story teller to immediately pull an audience into the world of the supernatural/paranormal and ultimately into the world of these three very different stories and Dan Tetsell has this ability. Without his ability to create that atmosphere of always looking for proof, “Ghost Stories” would be just another ghost story.
It is not, however, just the excellent performances of this cast as they re-tell their paranormal encounters that make this show what it is, it is also the very skilful use of physical space, sound, lights and special effects which are a vital part of this performance. Here set and costume designer (Jon Bausor), lighting designer (James Farncombe), sound designer (Nick Manning) and special effects (Scott Penrose) are as much a part of these ghost stories as any of the performers on stage and together they often skilfully use some of the classic techniques of theatre and film to achieve their desired atmospheric effect. The un-credited ingredient, but also vital to this performance is the physical theatre auditorium space itself and if you are going to produce this type of a show then it helps if you have a physical space that so often has its own ghost story to tell.
Will you be on the edge of your seat as these ghost stories use every opportunity to provide the illusion of a very immersive paranormal atmosphere on stage? That of course is going to be a very personal response, but whatever your response, there can be no doubt that this is a very tightly written work that, under the direction of Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman and Sean Holmes, gives its audience a very unusual theatrical experience.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com