Kitchen think drama: Vera Chok’s Lauren, left, Jay McGuiness’s Ben and Fiona Wade’s Lauren in Danny Robins’s 2:22 – A Ghost Story
THIS is turning into a boom year for thrillers as much as musicals at the Grand Opera House. First, The Woman In Black, then Sleuth, now 2:22 – A Ghost Story, and still to come, the courtroom drama Twelve Angry Men in May and The 39 Steps in July.
York, Europe’s self-proclaimed “most haunted city”, loves ghost stories. Here is a new one, a smart invader from modern-day London in a breathtaking show that has all the quality of an award-winning West End production, transferred to the tour circuit without any loss of capital-city gloss.
Just look at that state-of-the-art, open-plan, glass-encased kitchen, in Anna Fleischle’s desirable set design, topped off by the social and cultural wit of a James Graham comedy and a sleight of hand worthy of Derren Brown’s mind games.
Everything is right from the start. A packed auditorium is humming with excitement, nervous too, the tension cranked up by the dizzying, speeding turnover of numbers on the electronic clock – anything but 2:22! – to the accompaniment of Ian Dickinson’s propulsive sound design, setting the pulse racing too.
Throughout, Dickinson and lighting designer Lucy Carter will work in wickedly gleeful tandem, interjecting at regular intervals with sudden sounds, screams, blinding lights and a framing of the proscenium arch in red light at the start of each scene. You will judder, you will shudder, you may well shreak, jolted by the yelps of foxes doing what foxes do in the garden.
From the imagination of The Battersea Poltergeist and Uncanny podcaster, broadcaster and journalist Danny Robins comes the paranormal tale of teacher-on-maternity-leave Jenny (Fiona Wade) and always-right scientist Sam (George Rainsford) hosting their first dinner party since becoming the latest “posh tw*ts” to move into a newly gentrified Greater London neighbourhood.
Sam will be heading back from a work trip on the Isle of Sark. For several nights, however, Jenny has been disturbed at 2:22am precisely by the sound of someone moving around the house and a man’s voice crying, picked up via the baby monitor in daughter Phoebe’s bedroom. Convinced the house is haunted, we join her as she whiles away the hours painting until that time arrives. Cue more Dickinson and Carter fun and games.
Robins, with delicious timing throughout, is stirring the ingredients of a classic thriller with Hitchcockian elan, just as guest Lauren (Vera Chok), Sam’s best friend since university days, is stirring the risotto (it just would be risotto, wouldn’t it!).
Smoke screen: Jay McGuiness’s Ben at the glazed door, seeking supernatural truths in 2:22 – A Ghost Story. Picture: Johan Persson
Lauren has brought along her latest boyfriend, builder Ben (The Wanted’s Jay McGuiness): a streetwise, working-class counter to the yuppie London intellectuals.Last to arrive is George Rainsford’s Sam, a self-righteous, sarky, magniloquent sceptic, apologising for losing his phone on Sark. So begins class warfare on what turns out to be big Ben’s old turf before Sam and Jenny stripped out everything, just like in all the houses around there,each ending up with the same soulless kitchen, Ben notes.
Sam is a non-believer in ghosts, insisting more logical reasons must explain the noises. Ben believes in the supernatural; Vera could be persuaded either way. Let’s stay up to 2:22am, Jenny suggests, as the trendy wine flows and arguments rise – as ultimately does the sexual heat – in an echo of the tensions of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf or a Tennessee Williams play.
2:22 – A Ghost Story has the spooks to rival A Woman In Black, but now through the application of modern technology (a baby monitor, an unpredictable Alexa) and the illusion wizardry of Magic Circle member Chris Fisher. What lifts it to five-star status is the brilliance of Robins’s state-of-the-nation character study: the choices of wine, the risotto; Sam’s dinner party playlist (Massive Attack) and Jenny’s too (The XX); the reference to Sam and Lauren working together for a charity in Africa; the discussion about the lizard, mouse and monkey sections of our brain and how fear, rather than love, is our most powerful emotion.
You will love the way Robins fills the hours until 2:22am; the relationship revelations; the debate over the existence or non-existence of ghosts; the Charles Lindbergh story behind the invention of the baby monitor, and ultimately the séance conducted by Ben. Does a ghost appear? No comment, but Ben is like a ghost of the street’s past that, as with Lady Macbeth’s damned spot, cannot be erased, no matter the aspirational revamp.
2: 22: A Ghost Story has ample shocks and alarms, but above all it is uncomfortably, truthfully funny, and all the better for all that intellectual jousting. All four performances are terrific, the dialogue sometimes almost too hot to touch under the combustible direction of Matthew Dunster and Isabel Marr.
It feels wrong to highlight one performance, but it has to be said that Jay McGuiness, already boy band chart topper, Strictly champ, musical theatre leading man and young adult novelist, takes to “straight” theatre mightily impressively, every line a winner.
“Shhh, please don’t tell” requests a neon-lit message after the “reveal”. Hush, hush, promises Hutch, but please DO tell everyone to make the Grand Opera House their number one haunt this week.
2:22 – A Ghost Story spooks Grand Opera House, York, until May 4, 7.30pm nightly plus 3pm, Friday, and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Jay McGuiness’s Ben in a clinch with Vera Chok’s Lauren in 2:22 A Ghost Story
WHEN Jay McGuiness, boy band singer, songwriter, Strictly champion, musical theatre actor and fantasy novelist, saw 2:22 A Ghost Story, he knew what he wanted to do next.
“I turned to my manager [Damien Sanders] and said, ‘I’ve got to do that’,” recalls The Wanted vocalist, who is now touring in Danny Robins’s supernatural thriller. Next stop York, visiting the Grand Opera House from April 30 to May 4.
“Damien is a very convincing Cockney fella! He called up the casting agent, and after a successful reading, they said, ‘in you go’ – and then I had to wait five months for the new cast to start. It was like waiting for Christmas to come around!
“We had four weeks of rehearsals, which is more than enough for a play. We had time to get to know each other, whereas with musicals, you’re being whisked from one room to another, with lots of irons in the fire, dancing, doing your lines, trying on costumes.”
Newark-born Jay’s career in musicals had led indirectly to his participation in 2:22 A Ghost Story. “I saw the play because I did a musical with Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh: BIG! The Musical, based on the Tom Hanks film. We went to see Cheryl [Cole, from Girls Aloud], who was in the show.”
Was it scary? “I jumped out of my skin!” says Jay, 33. Next week you can find out why when he plays Ben alongside Vera Chok as Lauren, Fiona Wadeas Jenny and George Rainsfordas Sam in the show’s seventh cast.
Written by the award-winning Danny Robins, creator of the BBC podcast The Battersea Poltergeist, and directed by Matthew Dunster and Isabel Marr, 2:22 is billed as “an adrenaline-filled night where secrets emerge and ghosts may, or may not, appear” as Robins asks: “What do you believe? And do you dare discover the truth?”
Tensions rising in the kitchen: Jay McGuinness’s Ben with Vera Chok’s Lauren, left, and Fiona Wade’s Jenny in Danny Robins’s 2:22 A Ghost Story
“I continue to be blown away by the success of this play,” says Danny. “It demonstrates a huge appetite and curiosity for all things paranormal. This fabulous seventh cast for the 2024 leg of the tour will bring their own energy to these characters, telling the story anew for audiences across the UK.
“It’s always exciting to see the play come to life again in this way. It’s such a fun night out, and if chills give you thrills, you’re in for a treat.”
In 2:22, Jenny believes her new home is haunted, claiming she hears something every night at the same time, but her husband Sam is not having any of it. They argue with their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren and new partner Ben.
Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening, and that something is drawing closer, so they decide to stay up…until 2:22 in the morning… and then they will know. “I tend not to be awake at that time,” says Jay.
He met his fellow cast members at the start of rehearsals, “but I knew of them,” he says. “When you start, it’s like the first day of school, getting the jitters out of the way. It’s natural that after five years of being in a band, suddenly auditioning again was a big adjustment, thinking, ‘how have I got myself into this situation again?’! But once you try to make someone jump or laugh, it’s fun.”
Ben is Jay’s first role in a play rather than a musical, having appeared in Rip It Up, BIG! and Sleepless, a second show rooted in a Tom Hanks film. “I’ve absolutely loved it, especially being able to focus on the script, which facilitated us getting to know each other and find out everyone’s opinions on each character. It was like being back at drama school,” he says.
“Then getting out in front of an audience each night, when you have to make sure they’re laughing at the right moment, jumping at the right moment.”
No smoke without fire: Jay McGuiness lighting up in 2:22 – A Ghost Story. Picture: Johan Persson
Robins’s play is built around tensions brought on by class differences. “You can feel the different reactions in different theatres around the country!” says Jay, who wiull be on the road from January to June. “I’m playing a working-class man who feels out of place at this dinner party, somewhere fancy in London, where most of the houses are newly gentrified, so he puts his foot in it with ill-judged comments, and the way he talks to women is very old-school Cockney.
“It’s good that people in places like Norwich really connected with him, whereas it was a very different response in Cambridge.”
Jay is enjoying the collective thrill of a fright night at the theatre. “There’s something very exciting about it that’s different from something that’s introspective. It’s raw, and there’s plenty to chew on about class, ghosts and believing in the supernatural,” he says. “There’s fun to be had in hearing people around you screaming or laughing.”
Jay, who loves the ghost walks in Edinburgh, has plenty more to choose from on his return to York for the first time since The Wanted ambled down Shambles on their reunion two years ago. “I remember that shop with all the ‘ghosts’ in the window and the queue outside,” he says.
2:22 A Ghost Story spooks Grand Opera House, York, from April 30 to May 4, 7.30pm nightly plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday; 3pm, Friday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
The poster for 2:22 A Ghost Story, on tour at Grand Opera House, York
Ghostly goings-on at the Grand Opera House, York
IN “Europe’s most haunted city”, 2:22 A Ghost Story will be playing at the Grand Opera House, a theatre and former corn exchange with its own paranormal stories.
When asked about the ghostly goings-on in the Cumberland Street building, Paranormal Research York follows up its visit to the theatre by saying: “Our team encountered a variety of supernatural experiences. The Grand Opera House continues to intrigue and captivate with its haunting mysteries, each time we investigate.”
Laura McMillan, the Opera House’s theatre director, says: “With over 100 years of history, the Grand Opera House certainly has a few spooky tales to tell that make us the perfect host for 2:22 A Ghost Story.
“York is known worldwide for its ghost stories and I know that audiences are going to love being on the edge of their seats with 2:22 as they experience a night of adrenaline-filled entertainment.”
Jay McGuiness: the back story
Jay McGuiness: Singer, songwriter, actor, 2015 Strictly Come Dancing champion and fantasy novelist. Picture: Seamus Ryan
Born: Newark, Nottinghamshire, July 24 1990.
Training: Attended “normal Catholic secondary school” in Mansfield. Started Tuesday afternoon dance classes at Charlotte Hamilton’s Dance School at 13 when “voice had started squeaking at that point!” Later attended Midlands Academy of Dance and Drama in Nottingham.
Best known for: Member of boy band The Wanted. Debut single All Time Low topped UK charts in 2010, as did Glad You Came in 2011. Further Top Five singles with Heart Vacancy, Gold Forever, Lightning, Chasing The Sun, I Found You and Walk Like Rihanna and Top Ten hits with We Own The Night and Show Me Love (America).
Band re-formed in 2021, releasing greatest hits album Most Wanted and embarking on 12-date UK arena tour in Spring 202.
TV success: After taking break from The Wanted, he won Glitterball trophy with Russian-Kazakh professional dancer Aliona Vilani on 2015 series of BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing. Jive routine to You Never Can Tell and Misirlou, from Pulp Fiction, amased eight million hits on YouTube. Voted Strictly’s Best Ever Dance by BBC viewers in December 2020
Musicals: Starred in lead role of Josh Baskin in musical version of Tom Hanks’s movie Big! in Dublin in 2016. Reprised role in West End at Dominion Theatre, London, in 2019. Took West End lead role of Sam in Sleepless, A Musical Romance at Troubadour theatre, London, based on Tom Hanks’s movie Sleepless In Seattle, in 2020.
More theatre work: Rip It Up, 1960s’ song-and-dance show at Garrick Theatre; London, lead role of Bob Wallace in touring production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas in 2022.
Television work: Won celebrity version of Channel 4 show, Hunted, raising money for Stand Up To Cancer. Won weekly battle to take champion’s trophy in Richard Osman’s House Of Games. Presented regular features for BBC’s The One Show, fronting films on topics such as music education in schools and veganism.
Book: Debut fantasy novel for young adults, Blood Flowers, a story of love, witchcraft, betrayal and murder, published worldwide by Scholastic on January 8 2024.
The cover artwork for Jay McGuiness’s debut novel Blood Flowers
The Battersea Poltergeist: From podcast to live show with the audience as Dr Watson to the host and experts’ Sherlock Holmes
WHAT is The Battersea Poltergeist? Tonight’s show at the Grand Opera House in York – always a great haunt for ghost stories – will answer that question.
Writer, journalist and 2:22: A Ghost Story playwright Danny Robins will be leading the investigation at 7.30pm as part of a nine-date tour in Halloween season as his hit podcast comes out to play with live audiences. In tow will be his resident experts, paranormal investigators Ciaran O’Keeffe and Evelyn Hollow.
Fronting this year’s BBC docu-drama podcast on “Britain’s strangest ever haunting” case, Robins told the terrifying true story of Shirley Hitchings, the focus of frenzied poltergeist activity in and around her family home at Number 63, Wycliffe Road, Battersea, London, from 1956 onwards, starting when she was 15.
The Hitchings’ poltergeist case went on to span 12 years, making national newspaper headlines with its story of strange noises, flying objects, exorcisms and ghostly communication at the now demolished house. An attempt was even made to contact the poltergeist on live prime-time TV on the BBC and it was discussed by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons.
“It’s a great story, a story that when I came across it, straightaway I knew it was special, and the real thrill is that it’s an ordinary family going through such an extraordinary experience,” says Danny.
The Battersea Poltergeist series duly became Apple’s number one drama podcast worldwide, as what began as an eight-part BBC Radio 4 series, featuring Toby Jones and Dafne Keen, turned into a genre-busting podcast phenomenon by notching up nearly three million streams and downloads.
After a bidding war, Hollywood horror specialists Blumhouse – makers of Insidious, Get Out and Paranormal Activity – have snapped up the rights for a TV adaptation, now actively in development with Robins as an executive producer.
“The podcast just caught a moment,” he says. “It’s about this family trapped in their house, and people connected with that, at a point when we were all becoming very claustrophobic in our houses.
“We’re living in these crazy, chaotic and, sadly, death-filled times, and I think we want ghost stories. We’re looking for answers. We’re hitting on those moments like you saw after the First World War, after the Second World War, these kinds of uncertain times, when people become interested in the paranormal. I think we’re seeing a very definite boom in interest in the paranormal and ghost stories.”
To some degree, says Danny, The Battersea Poltergeist – Live will be “like the podcast come to life” as it delves even deeper into the paranormal cold case of the poltergeist the Hitchings family nicknamed “Donald”.
“It’ll be me and the experts, Ciaran and Evelyn. Shirley will play a part in it too, either by video, as will be the case in York, or, fingers crossed, she’ll be there in the flesh for the London date, but she has diabetes now, so she has to be careful, especially with the Covid situation,” he reveals. “She’s elderly and we can’t take her around the whole country with us, but we’re really excited about her playing a role in each show.
“The show will be us talking about the case, but we’ll also have this amazing visual element. We’ll be able to use the big screen on stage to show a whole load of the evidence we have, photographs, newspaper cuttings and video of witnesses.”
The Battersea Poltergeist is an ongoing story. “We’re still getting chilling new evidence coming in,” says Danny. “I’ve got this incredible new pair of witnesses who have terrifying new stories and insights only just discovered. We’re going to share those stories for the first time on stage; totally new information that we’ve not been able to reveal in the podcast. Could they hold the final clues to solving this supernatural mystery?
“With my theatrical head on, I want it to be a fun, spooky night out, particularly as these tour shows are falling around Halloween. It’ll be the full bells and whistles, the Woman In Black–style moments of darkness and screams and poltergeist sounds – and that makes it a delicious live experience on stage, where we can show things in a way we couldn’t in the podcast.”
Whether placing themselves in #Team Sceptic or #TeamBeliever, tonight’s audience members are invited to play their part as supernatural sleuths for the night, with the opportunity to put questions to Danny and the experts about the case in a question-and-answer session. “With the audience as our co-investigators, we can be Sherlock Holmes to their Dr Watson,” he says.
Is it necessary to have heard the podcast before coming tonight, Danny? “Absolutely not! Our starting point, whether you have heard about The Battersea Poltergeist or not, is to approach it with an open mind. Let’s explore together. Fundamentally, it’s a fun, if scary night, and there’s something special about sitting in a darkened theatre with a shiver going down your back,” he says.
“I feel this story is a mystery that keeps on giving. I’ve been examining the case for two years and I’m still learning more – as will the York audience!”
The Battersea Poltergeist radio series takes the form of a documentary drama. “One of the influences was Ghost In The Water, a 1982 BBC drama that purported to be a documentary, and our story was almost the opposite in that it’s a documentary that people thought must be a drama because it’s such an extraordinary story,” says Danny.
“There’s something really exciting about being on a ghost hunt, and on stage the haunting will unfold as I tell the story throughout the evening, with the opportunity to ask questions. Each night, I’m totally prepared that someone might have a brilliant brainwave that could solve the mystery!
“For anyone who is sceptical or thinks they’re not really interested, all I would say is we have stories from people who were living in the street at the same time.”
Where does Danny stand on sceptics? “The interesting thing with the podcast is that listeners were pretty much divided between sceptics and believers, and so it’s almost like an Agatha Christie locked-room drama,” he says.
“If you’re a believer or a sceptic, either way you think, ‘how can this case go on for 12 years; how did it go on for so long?’, as we look at the psychological side of it and at the impact of the elements in the story. People just love trying to solve a mystery.”
Analysing why the British are so drawn to ghost stories, Danny suggests: “It’s because we’re deeply frightened of death, and for us ghost stories are both a comfort and cause of anxiety, whereas other societies are better at processing death.
“The less that organised religion is part of our lives in Britain, the more that ghosts are part of our psyche, leading to a boom in intertest in ghost stories in drama, on screen and in books, and also a worrying rise in exorcism in Christian culture. There’s also a threat to our lives in the Covid climate, where we’re having to confront our mortality in ways we haven’t for decades.”
Should you be wondering what Shirley Hitchings will be contributing on video tonight, Danny says: “We filmed her on October 18, when I asked her series of questions culled from what people asked on social media. Hopefully, we may have Shirley on the phone too.”
2021 has been a remarkable year for Danny Robins, bringing not only the success of The Battersea Poltergeist podcast, but the August 3 to October 16 hit run of 2:22: A Ghost Story at the Noel Coward Theatre, London.
“I’d already started writing it quite a while before I began working on the Shirley Hitchings story,” he says. “It was a process that took about five years, and I’ve been obsessed with ghosts for all of my life.
“When I researched 2:22, I put out a question, asking if anyone had seen a ghost, and so many stories came in that I thought, ‘these stories should be told’, so that led to the Haunted podcast series, and then I was told this amazing story of The Battersea Poltergeist.”
Meanwhile, the writing of 2:22: A Ghost Story reached the finishing line, and a cast was sought by director Matthew Dunster. Step forward pop star Lily Allen for her West End debut in Robins’ contemporary haunted-house thriller.
“Landing Lily for the role of Jenny was amazing,” says Danny. “Out director just had an instinct that Lily would be good, and our casting director was working with Lily’s mum [theatre producer Alison Owen].
“We managed to get a script to Lily, who happened to be at that stage of thinking, ‘what should I do next?’, and she turned out to be a wonderful actress.”
The Battersea Poltergeist – Live, Grand Opera House, York, tonight (2/11/2021), 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 7615or at atgtickets.com/york. For a trailer, head to: youtu.be/jVi15MTkjeE
Danny Robins: Writer, journalist, creator of The Battersea Poltergeist podcast and playwright, whose 2021 debut West End play, 2:22: A Ghost Story, starred Lily Allen.
Co-created BBC Radio 4 sitcom Rudy’s Rare Records with Sir Lenny Henry, writing four series and adapting it into his first stage play, Rudy’s Rare Records, co-commissioned by Birmingham Rep and Hackney Empire, again starring Henry.
As a comedy writer, he created BBC series Young Dracula and We Are History and The Cold Swedish Winter for BBC Radio 4. His Haunted podcasts for Panoply explored real-life ghost stories; his new podcast series for BBC Sounds, Uncanny, launched on October 20, featuring real-life stories of ghost and UFO encounters.
Evelyn Hollow: Scottish writer and paranormal psychologist for TV shows and podcasts, who holds a Master of Research degree in Paranormal Psychology. Trained as a travel writer by Lonely Planet, she was a resident author at Esoterica Zine and occult columnist for Corvid Culture and has taught writing classes at everywhere from universities to arts festivals.
A former psychology lecturer, she now gives guest lectures on paranormal history and the quantum physics of anomalous phenomena.
Ciaran O’Keeffe: Applied psychology professor, who provides a sceptical voice to various paranormal TV and radio shows, such as Most Haunted, Ghost Adventurers, Celebrity Ghost Hunt Live, The Battersea Poltergeist and Haunted.
Associate head of school of human & social sciences at Buckinghamshire New University, responsible for programming several crime degrees: BSc (Hons) in criminological psychology, BSc (Hons) in psychology & criminology and MSc in applied forensic psychology.
Areas of expertise are parapsychology and investigative psychology, leading to involvement in many unusual projects: physiological effects of infrasound at the Royal Festival Hall; ghost investigation of Hampton Court Palace; exorcism training day; hostage negotiation simulations; lie detecting for the film Spy Game.
Working with Global Ghost Gang of researchers on the book Ghosted! Exploring The Haunting Reality Of Paranormal Encounters for publication in early 2022.
Definition of Poltergeist
An indestructible ghost or spirit of chaos, responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved.
