Kindred Spirits is a ghostly comedy by Ross McGregor showing at the Brockley Jack until the 8th of January 2022.
An amusing and technically adept festive comedy
Crime writer, Jeremy Roland, is haunted by the ghost of his romance novelist aunt who makes various attempts at influencing his narrative style as he tries to write a new novel to a Christmas deadline. It’s a clever conceit which provides ample opportunity for confusion and complicated plot twists.
There is some lovely repartee reminiscent of Noel Coward. And the narrative, although it takes a good 30 minutes to properly get going, has some nice Ortonesque moments of absurdity and some delightful meta-theatrical one-liners.
The cast, consisting of Bryan Moriarty, Rachel Summers and Ben Higgins, under the detailed technical direction of Kate Bannister, take all of this in their stride, incorporating musical theatre, hard-boiled detective drama, English manners and stylised cartoon to create an amusing and technically adept festive comedy.