The Woman In Black

The Woman in Black – Review by Tanja Kovac We’ve become desensitized to horror. There are so many daily news gross outs, even the most ghoulish stories Hollywood has to offer don’t make us scream. How nice then to get a tingly sensation live. The Woman in Black, now playing at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne, is based on a gothic Susan Hill Novel. A young lawyer, Arthur Kipps, is sent to a tiny village on the East Coast of England to settle an elderly woman’s estate. At her funeral, he encounters a mourner, a woman in black, with a sickly face. Evasive locals deny her attendance. Isolated and alone in the late Mrs Drablow’s home, she appears to him again, slowly revealing her paranormal purpose. The woman in black is low budget. A minimalist stage, obscuring mist and audience imagination create the terror. Brett Tucker, as Kipps, is surprisingly good for a TV soapie heartthrob. The other seven roles are capably performed by John Waters. But the real star is the story. A ghostly, malevolent spirit haunting a house may not seem original, but that is precisely why the audience shrieks. The eerie legacy of The Woman in Black lingers after the lights come up. ****