Things That Go Bump in the Stalls
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill and Stephen Mallatratt
Norwich Theatre Royal, 1995
Actors who collapse into fits of giggles on stage are said to corpse. Comedians can knock you dead or slay you in the aisles, but if they fail to do this then they are said to die the death. There is an area at the foot of the stage to accommodate the orchestra called the pit, and it is deemed bad luck to wish anyone good luck on opening night – “Break a leg” is more common. With even the language conspiring to create an atmosphere of doom and disaster, it is hardly surprising there are so many ghosts walking abroad in Britain’s theatres. Here is a brief look at some of the most famous.
York Theatre Royal
The ghostly figure of a Grey Lady is sometimes seen wandering around the dress circle. Opinions differ as to who she is. Her habit recalls that of a medieval nun, so some believe she is a restless spirit who angered her order by falling pregnant by a townsman and was bricked up in a cellar for her ‘crime’. Others claim she was expelled from her convent for some unspecified reason and died of a broken heart. But a bigger mystery is why should such a wretched creature return to haunt a building which wasn’t put up until 1774? The first permanent theatre on the site had been adapted from a tennis court on Minster Yard just ten years earlier. (Perhaps she was simply an innocent passer-by after all, struck by a vicious volley one tragic day in years gone by?) The management naturally insist she hands around simply because she enjoys the shows, but quite how this theory is meant to square with that of a similar spirit who once manifested itself in the gents’ toilet of the York Arms nearby is more difficult to say.
Theatre Royal, Bath
Bath Theatre Royal also boasts the recurring presence of a Woman in Grey, but this one leaves behind her the distinctive whiff of jasmine. Not a nun, then, she has been seen sitting in a box wearing feathers in her hair by no lesser personages than Anna Pavlova in the twenties and Dame Anne Neagle, who reported her glum appearance in 1975. She is thought to be an actress from the 19th century who committed suicide either by falling from a window at the theatre od hanging herself in a room at the Garrick’s Head pub next door. Not entirely alone, however, she is pre-dated by a Phantom Doorman in 18th-century garb who will sometimes greet actors and actresses but is never seen by the staff. Perhaps over the years he has become as superstitious as the performers themselves?
Sadler’s Wells
At midnight, a ghostly figure dressed like a clown sometimes takes is place in one of the boxes. He is thought to be the great Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837), who made his stage debut on the site at the age of three and also gave his farewell performance there 47 years later. Lilian Baylis, who built the current theatre in the 1920s, also haunts the upper gallery no doubt making sure the standards she established are being kept up – and, who knows, possibly enjoying a laugh with old Joe in the bar afterwards.
Shaftesbury Avenue
The West End of London with its proliferation of theatres has a correspondingly high proportion of ghostly manifestations. These range from mysterious sounds backstage at the Duke of York’s (is it the ghost of actor-manager Violet Melnotte still knocking around sixty years after her death?) to the spooky sight of a World War One soldier sitting expectantly in the dress circle of the Coliseum just before curtain up. Said to spear each year on the anniversary of his death, this poor tommy was meant to be so taken with the girls in the chorus line that once back in the trenches he went – deliberately, or in a daze? – to his death.
He is a benevolent spirit who presages good luck for the show he visits. At the nearby Haymarket Theatre another augury of success is eagerly looked for at the start of a run. John Buckstone, an actor-manager of the old school and favourite of Queen Victoria, likes to sit in a box in his spectral frock coat, or wander the corridors opening and shutting the dressing room doors. But again, these harmless activities could just as easily be the work of Henry Field, the man who held the same post in the 1700s.
The revenant at the Adelphi, however, is rather more active. In 1897 the matinée idol William Terriss was stabbed to death by a jealous rival outside the stage door in Maiden Lane, and his restless spirit now stalks the auditorium at night, turning handles, causing puffs of smoke, and generally going bump. Frightened onlookers once watched as ‘Terriss’ carefully lowered a whole row of seats, one after the other, while other staff have reported unexplained cold spots in the theatre.
Drury Lane, however, lays claim to being the most haunted theatre in England. There has been a theatre on the site since 1663, and the present building is the fourth to occupy the spot, darting from 1812. In 1939 the cast of Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years were lined up on stage for a phot call when a Man in Grey (that colour again) was seen to walk across the circle. The supposition that this might have been a backstage worker abruptly vanished as the figure carried on walking through a solid wall and out of sight. The impression of greyness came from his long cloak, but the rest of his garb recalled a much earlier era – white ruffled-front shirt, tricorn hat, powdered wig, thigh-length boots and a dress sword. Could it be the spirit of the man whose skeleton was uncovered during restoration work in the 1840s, walled up in a secret chamber with a murderer’s knife still protruding from his shoulder blades? If it was, he seems to be taking his demise rather well as he, too, is supposed to predict good audiences. On the other hand, there was no sign of him a few years ago when Miss Saigon began its monumental run. Maybe he simply preferred Ivor Novello?
Spookier still is the legend of the face in the mirror. Accompanied by the smell of lavender and the sound of ghostly feet practising a tap routine, this apparition is said to be Dan Leno, the popular 19th-century entertainer, paying a visit to his old dressing room. Which dressing room, however, is kept a closely guarded secret by the management for fear of putting the willies up the present incumbent.
The Irish actor Charles Macklin once murdered a fellow actor in the Green Room as the result of some wrangle over a wig. Opinions are divided as to which of these, victor or victim, returns to make their presence felt. But other manifestations are more physical. Michael Crawford one reported a pair of ghostly hands guiding him through a tricky moment on stage. Were these, one wonders, the same hands that are said occasionally to interfere with female performers as they stand in the wings waiting to go on? And did they once tug playfully at the resident archivist’s coat-tails one afternoon as he left his office? At least one Drury Lane general manager was convinced a poltergeist of some sort was at work. Objects were seen to take on a life of their own and dance around his desk. One-time actor-manager Arthur Collins used to forbid his staff to stay late at night, so perhaps coming back to frighten the life out of those who still do is his way of enforcing his rule from beyond the grave.
But even in those theatres which do not lay claim to any one particular spectre, the ghost is still said to walk every Friday. This is theatre-speak for payday, and the expression probably dates from the time when managers of touring companies invariably doubled as the ghost in Hamlet… (Another version says it originated when an actor playing that part refused to go on until he’d been paid.) But wherever the phrase comes from, the proliferation of ghoulish revenants in Britain’s theatres indicates that the tradition of haunting is alive and well… if not dead as a doornail and simply refusing to lie down!
PS
Talk about spooky.
Stephen Mallatratt’s marvellously chilling adaptation of Susan Hill’s story began life at Alan Ayckbourn’s Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough in 1987, transferred to London in January 1989, and until 2023 was still running to shocked and shrieking full houses at the Fortune Theatre (home, earlier, of Beyond the Fringe, of all things). It became the second longest-running play in the history of the West End, after Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Pre-kids, my wife and I went to see it on tour in Bath, then post-kids we saw it again, once they had grown big enough to be less likely to wet themselves in the stalls.
Cut to the autumn of 2012. We as a family are all in London to help settle our son into his hall of residence at UCL. That night, to offset the imminent misery of parting from our firstborn for the first time, we all go to see The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre. We settle into our seats and I open the programme. The first thing I find is this article staring back at me with my very own name at the bottom of the page.
What was that about things coming back to haunt you? Maybe the play isn’t the only second longest-running thing in the West End. Looks like this article may be in with a shout as well.
(By the way, our son did very well, thanks. He gained a doctorate in organic chemistry while his sister went on to become the best photographer in Cambridge.)