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Ghost Stories

 
Stephanie Green Review by Stephanie Green 3 Published: 27 Mar 2025 Edinburgh Festival Theatre Show Dates: 26 Mar 2025-29 Mar 2025

This is not Hitchcock’s Psycho. Scary enough to give you a frisson or two, Ghost Stories, written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, co-creator of Derren Brown’s television and stage shows, makes for an entertaining if not terrifying night. Introduced as a lecture illustrated by fascinating slides of photos claiming to exhibit the supernatural, any horror is initially kept in check by the pseudo-science of the lecturer, Professor Goodman (an engaging Dan Tetsell) who claims that we see what we want to see. He aims to debunk the ghost stories that follow: a watchman in a deserted warehouse, a teenager whose car has broken down in a lonely forest and a father in a nursery prepared for a newborn and claims that the ‘ghosts’ arise from our own guilty consciences.

an entertaining if not terrifying night

Howling winds greet the audience on entering, later torchlight or car lights sweeping a dark stage, all ramp up the tension. Expect loud noises to make you jump and each episode containing unexpected ‘things’ - no spoilers - which appear, the only question is what and when. However, the rambling text fails to engage our sympathy with the characters, despite the actors putting their all into it. Each episode gets darker but it is Goodman’s own experience, in particular a traumatic incident in his childhood, which is truly disturbing. This is probably because it’s left to the audience’s imagination. You might have nightmares from this incident alone but to be honest, the trailer is the most scary part of this show.

Amir Nisi

Stephanie Green

Stephanie Green has reviewed Theatre and Dance in Edinburgh since 2011 but previously travelled widely, mainly in Eastern Europe and Russia, writing about puppetry. She also studied shadow puppetry and sacred dance in Bali. In the 1970s, she trained as a puppeteer at the Little Angel, London and later worked at the alternative In the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. After training at the Place, the London School of Contemporary Dance, in her 20s she then gave up dancing until starting again in her 60s just for fun. She has recently danced in a community group with Barrowland Ballet (at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2013), Oceanallover and at the South Bank, London as part of the Festival of the Silver Age. She is also a novelist, playwright and poet. www.stephaniegreen.org.uk/

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The Blurb:

The long-running West End hit returns!

When Professor Goodman, arch-sceptic out to debunk the paranormal, embarks on an investigation of three apparent hauntings – as recounted by a night-watchman, a teenage boy, and a businessman awaiting his first child – Goodman finds himself at the outer limits of rationality, and fast running out of explanations.

Enter a world full of thrilling twists and epic turns, where the ultimate love-letter to horror is imagined live on stage. A fully sensory and electrifying encounter, Ghost Stories is one of London’s best-reviewed plays of all time and will keep you on the edge-of-your-seat. This is a theatrical experience like no other.

After exhilarating audiences across the world with record-breaking, sell-out productions and a smash hit film, Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s Ghost Stories is a worldwide phenomenon more spine-tingling and fantastically terrifying than ever.

Are you brave enough to book?

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