Published: 15 July 2010
by SIMON WROE

“YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!” “EXTREME SHOCK!” “WE STRONGLY ADVISE THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION...” 

To horror enthusiasts these sentiments are what Barry White’s music is to lotharios of a certain age. 

The prelude to  Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s West End thriller is so chock full of this carry-on – with bodies wrapped in police tape in the lobby and rubber-clad floors – one starts to wonder if it can possibly deliver on all its grisly promises.

“I am going to be SO scared,” one theatregoer was overheard saying. 

It sounded like she would be asking for her money back if she was not. Happily then for everyone without a nervous disposition, Ghost Stories is terrifying. 

Happier news still for the production, because terror is its reason for being. 

Dyson, one of the League of Gentlemen creators, and Nyman, who co-writes Derren Brown’s TV and theatre shows, have concocted a smart, enjoyable sliver of Grand Guignol that will raise night-time lighting bills across the capital. Nyman plays Professor Phillip Goodman, a sneering parapsychologist delivering a lecture on ghosts, using three “real-life” stories as examples.

The characterisation of the three “percipients” – those who claim to have seen the spirits – is slender verging on emaciated, and those looking for a plot will not find one here; but Ghost Stories is not interested in such things. The show wants only screams. 

It succeeds thanks to Jon Bausor’s set of clever perspectives and revolving rooms, special effects by Inner Magic Circle magician Scott Penrose and fascinating factual research such as The Well to Hell Hoax mixed in with unsettling photographs that may or may not be true. 

Like all the most effective horror it knows that fact is scarier than fiction, that the cynic is a better mouthpiece than the believer, and that you should always, always, check under the bed.

Booking to November. 020 7907 7071. • St Martin’s Lane, WC2