Michael Cornell’s Michael Nightly, playing Mayor Dick Nightly with deadly earnest intent, in The Wetwang Hauntings – Live!
FIRST, the murky mystery history bit: between 1986 and 1993, a series of often violent hauntings rocked the East Riding village of Wetwang. The cases went cold and all the records were lost…until now!
This week, interconnected York companies Neon Crypt (purveyors of macabre theatre) and The Deathly Dark Tours (ghost walk hosts) are going live with their investigations, boldly venturing where only their Wetwang Hauntings podcast series has ventured before.
Enter Dr Dorian Deathly (alias actor and voiceover artiste Jamie McKeller), not afraid to introduce himself as “York’s premier spookologist”, who will be simultaneously helped and hindered in his investigations by Deathly Dark Tours’ daft duo Dafydd and Dalton Deathly, the alter-egos of fellow Wetwang Hauntings podcast writers Jimmy Johnson (in bow tie and black nail polish) and Ben Rosenfield [built like a Victorian bodybuilder, kitted out by Wednesday Addams) .
Tooled up for a poltergeist encounter: Jimmy Johnson’s Dafydd Deathly, left, Ben Rosenfield’s Dalton Deathly and Jamie McKeller’s Dr Dorian Deathly
On hand too will be Dede Deathly (Laura McKeller) in multiple guises for the re-telling of these reopened cases, along with the mysterious Mayor Dick Nightly (any echo of former Honorary Mayor of Wetwang Richard Whitely is entirely coincidental!).
Nightly (deep-voiced, deader-than-deadpan Michael Cornell) is now played by deadly earnest actor son Michael Nighly – twice Nightly, as it were – who ploughs his own furrow, resolute in purpose, stony of face, not always in tandem with storytellers Dafydd and Dalton, nor with Dorian as he strives to keep order.
The show is a work in progress, rehearsed in only five days, and it has an air of shambling, occasionally shambolic enthusiasm, deliberately so for the benefit of the midnight-dark humour, but also unpredictably too.
Laura McKeller in one of her multiple roles in The Wetwang Hauntings – Live!
Like when Johnson, ever dapper in his velvet suit, has to exit stage left urgently to, how shall I put this, throw up, not as a Pavlovian reaction to the nefarious deeds, but as the culmination of feeling ill all day. Round of applause, please, for ploughing on.
Likewise, the “Booth” is kept busy with requests for sound effects or jolted into action to remedy a missed cue. This is all part of the madcap fun of the rollercoaster ride through three newly re-heated cold cases: first, the Grainger family in Cleaver Avenue, then the Wetwang Asylum with its multiple name changes.
And finally, a choice of four, decided by audience votes in the interval. Would it be The Playground, VHDeath, The Haunted Haddock or John Merrylegs? VHDeath on Thursday, a reward, surely for its punning title.
Ben Rosenfield’s Dalton Deathly interviewing Laura McKeller’s “Sh***y” Phyllis
Murky matters are played out on a stage set out as Dorian’s paranormal investigations HQ with a drawing board (to keep going back to), neon lit in red with the word Deathly, plus minimal stage furniture, such as chairs and a stool, and ample curtains. Above is a screen put to regular use for case titles, Nightly’s cassette tape recordings and VHF footage.
Cornell’s dourly Yorkshire Nightly – last seen in 1988 – has a habit of turning up like Banquo’s ghost, whether haunting the mezzanine level or standing silently in the “Booth”, hovering ever closer over the perimeter of the audience seating or re-creating the Mayor’s ever more urgent interviews into the horrors that befell Wetwang.
The chaotically comedic style has echoes of physical theatre practitioners Le Navet Bete (whose version of Dracula: The Bloody Truth was staged by Neon Crypt earlier this year), and more darkly of The League Of Gentlemen too, in the Deathlies’ first full-length play. It carries the Neon Crypt and Deathly Dark tour house styles too, nimble on its feet, quick in reaction time, more often daft than scary – and not averse to spoofing Danny Robins’ Uncanny work.
Dr Dorian Deathly, eminent York spookologist, leading the paranormal investigations in The Wetwang Hauntings – Live!
In Noises Off and The Play That Goes Wrong tradition, nothing will stop either Deathly team or Nightly from completing the grim task in hand. Jump scares? Yes. Horror? Hammy as Hammer, yes. Awful puns? Yes. Did you hear about the case of the ghostly bird? The poultrygeist . Boom boom. Thank you, Dorian, for that one.
What’s next for Dorian and co? More Wetwang Hauntings podcasts and plans for an expanded version of the live show. Oh, and Neon Crypt are contemplating a spooky take on the nightclub hell of John Godber’s Bouncers next May with a cast of McKeller times two, Cornell and fellow co-founder Laura Castle. Not so much John Godber as John Ghostbuster, perhaps?!
Neon Crypt & The Deathly Dark Tours present The Wetwang Hauntings – Live!, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, 2.30pm and 7.30pm today (8/11/2025). Suitable for age 13 upwards. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
