Red light spells danger: Neon Crypt’s Michael Cornell, left, Laura Castle, Laura McKeller and Jamie McKeller in Danny Robins’s 2:22 A Ghost Story
AFTER two visits to the Grand Opera House, Uncanny and The Battersea Poltergeist ghost storyteller Danny Robins’s West End smash 2:22 A Ghost Story falls into the welcoming hands of York spook specialists Neon Crypt, who will stage the modern-day horror show in traverse – with audiences to either side of the stage – for the first time. “The audience are a part of the story. There is nowhere to escape,” forewarns director Jamie McKeller.
Jenny (Laura McKeller) believes her new home is haunted, but husband Sam (Jamie McKeller) is having none of it. They argue with their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren (Laura Castle) and new partner Ben (Michael Cornell). Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening, and ever closer, so they vow to stay up until 2:22am…and only then will they know.
“Ready to scare the absolute beans out of you”, here Jamie McKeller discusses Neon Crypt’s latest spooky production with CharlesHutchPress.
What attracted you to presenting 2:22 A Ghost Story, Jamie?
“Nick Hern Books, who we’ve previously worked with on Dracula – The Bloody Truth and The Hound Of The Baskervilles, let us know that the rights were available, so we had a very quick read-through with the four of us to decide if it was the right fit.
“Neon Crypt have a reputation for very silly, very chaotic theatre, so 2:22 is quite a diversion for us. We all agreed that if any of us felt that it wasn’t working, we would abandon the idea.
“We read Act One and it wasn’t great. We had a chat about the tone, the delivery and character. When we read Act Two, it fired into life and we knew it was one we had to do.”
Laura McKeller’s Jenny, left, Laura Castle’s Lauren, Jamie McKeller’s Sam and Michael Cornell’s Ben gather around the dinner table in Neon Crypt’s 2:22 A Ghost Story
What makes 2:22 such a good modern ghost story…and what makes it distinctive in an already well-stocked market?
“In a time of modern horror, audiences can be somewhat desensitised to shocks and jumps. Theatre cannot do what a 70ft projection screen can, so there’s a magic to figuring out how to deliver those shocks and jumps in the moment.
“2:22 is a ghost story, but it’s also a story about grief, loss and family. The temporary nature of a human life, and how the spaces we inhabit are more fixed and forced to change around the living. Threaded through it all is a great big question: ‘Do ghosts really exist?’”
What are the attractions of staging 2:22 in traverse?
“Theatre@41 is such a diverse space, and we love taking advantage of that. We’ve performed here in end-on, cabaret, thrust and now traverse. Landscape in July next year.
Jamie McKeller as arch sceptic Sam in Neon Crypt’s 2:22 A Ghost Story
“Having the flexibility as a company is wonderful. In terms of 2:22, the rights state that we could not emulate the touring productions, urging people staging it to find their own design.
“By building the show in traverse, we’ve moved it as far away from the end-on staging as possible, and for an audience it provides a really immersive experience. They are IN the room with us, and there is nowhere to run.”
What will be the stage design within that traverse staging?
“The whole show is set in one large room in a modernised Victorian house, a space which features a living room and kitchen and great big patio doors. That last element is going to be a headache for smaller companies: actual working patio doors are very expensive, and very, very heavy!
“But we have them (thanks eBay and a miscalculation in measurements by someone) and they look incredible. There’s a real ‘WOW’ moment when people walk in, and then a sense of ‘oh no’ when they realise just how immersed into the horror they will be. What a splendid night out.”
Neon Crypt in 2:22 A Ghost Story, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, November 10 to 14, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: https://tickets.41monkgate.co.uk/.
Hands-on-the-table time as tension mounts in Neon Crypt’s 2:22 A Ghost Story