FRIGHT NIGHT! Forget horror movies, it’s the world’s first horror play. We sent two scaredy-cats to test their mettle.(Features)

Daily Mail (London) July 9, 2010 Byline: PETRONELLA WYATT, RICHARD BARBER SITTING in the Duke of York’s Theatre, I am screaming as I have never screamed before. I am here to see Ghost Stories, the most terrifying play in London, the website of which warns those of a nervous disposition, or under 15 years of age, not to attend. horrormovies2010now.net horror movies 2010

During its Liverpool run, an ambulance had to be called to the aid of fainting audience members. I scream again; a keening sound that has patrons hurrying to my side.

‘Oh, dear,’ says one kindly woman. ‘It hasn’t even started yet. What will you do when the curtain goes up?’ ‘You don’t understand,’ I holler. ‘The man in front of me sat on my foot! It’s trapped between his bottom and the seat of his chair.’ Finally, my colleague Richard persuades the man to release my foot. It’s starting to swell and my shoes look like accordions. If I was not of a nervous disposition before, I am now. The curtain goes up and I grab Richard’s arm.

Squinting at the stage, I see Andy Nyman, of Channel 4′s Mind Control, playing a professor of the paranormal who will introduce three ghost stories. First he asks the audience if they believe in ghosts. Half of the patrons raise their hands, and 12 claim to have seen one.

When I interview Andy later, he says: ‘People don’t believe in God any more, but we all have to believe in something, so now it’s ghosts.’ The show plays on basic human fears, such as isolation, guilt and our horror of death. ‘We thought of all the things that scared us, and went on from that,’ says Andy, who has an Elizabethan-style pointed beard. I’m not allowed to give away the plots, so will simply say that one story concerns a night-watchman alone in an empty building; the second, a man whose car has broken down; the third, a Rosemary’s Baby-like tale, featuring a banker.

I wait to see how my scare-ometer reacts. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m easily frightened. Someone has attempted to make the stage menacing by covering it with bits of tattered material.

The audience are prepared for shocks. Jayne, a 30-year-old accountant sitting on my Daily Mail Quentin Letts’s heart was like Ringo Starr. of a for masochists. with a dicky should right, has taken a tranquilliser. She looks so comatose I doubt she’d react if the theatre caught fire. There are real shocks a-plenty (the broken car story is regarded by Andy as the most disturbing). ‘During one of our out-of-London runs,’ Andy remarks happily, ‘we had to call the Red Cross, so many people were upset, and once, this huge bloke got up and ran from the theatre.’ As the story of the watchman unfolds, my scare-ometer rises to seven. When the play portrays a man in a broken down car, my scare-ometer, to Andy’s astonishment, plunges. ‘But what about the really scary moment?’ he says. website horror movies 2010

‘You mean when the thing went thing and the other thing went thingumy and the man did whatever? I switched off,’ I admit. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t afraid.’ The story about the monstrous baby sets my scare-ometer rising. When the father of the baby, which is hidden from view, starts feeding it cat food, a middle-aged man behind me wails.

‘Are you very scared?’ I whisper. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It reminded me that I forgot to feed my cat before I left.’ I giggle, then cower against Richard. I’m terrified that we will be shown the baby’s face. ‘Don’t show the baby,’ I mutter. I find most babies repulsive, so a monster of a baby would have me yelling the house down.

The professor reveals he is haunted by a boy who died down a drain. Then IT happens. The THING. I can’t disclose exactly what, suffice to say that when the curtain falls I sigh with relief. So does Richard, who is fed up with being grabbed.

RICHARD BARBER SAYS:

YOU WOULD think that you couldn’t be frightened in a theatre. A darkened cinema, yes. In front of a DVD at home, all the lights turned down, quite possibly. But not with a couple of hundred other people clearly visible all around you. Well, you’d be wrong.

Halfway through the creepy tale about a night-watchman gradually becoming aware that he’s not alone, a hand suddenly grips my left arm. And Petronella was sitting on my right. My assailant turned out to be Galia, 29, from North London, keen to cling on to someone — anyone — for comfort.

Seconds later, she let out an involuntary scream. Her 21-year-old cousin, Rosemary, had spilt her plastic beaker of red wine all over her when something on stage had gone bump in the night.

WHEN the lights come up, Galia reveals that the stories will haunt her. ‘I’m a real scaredycat,’ she says. ‘I mean, I have trouble watching Doctor Who.’ So why torture herself?

‘People enjoy being scared: that rush of adrenaline triggered by fear.’ Rosemary agrees. ‘I go to horror movies with my boyfriend all the time,’ she says. ‘This would make the equivalent of a great date movie because you want to cling on to the person next to you.’ All of which is music to the ears of Jeremy Dyson, one of the founder members of the surreal League Of Gentlemen radio and TV series and co-writer of Ghost Stories with Andy Nyman.

‘We met aged 15 at Jewish summer camp,’ says Jeremy, 44, ‘and we clicked immediately. I’d always liked being frightened from an early age.’ In 1998, Andy invited Jeremy to a mock seance in the old underground prison in London’s Clerkenwell.

The two spoke about arranging walks around haunted houses, but it was to be another ten years before the idea for Ghost Stories was born. Each began reading suitable material and watching unsuitable films.

The show opened at the Liverpool Playhouse in February.

‘We had no idea whether there’d be an appetite for it,’ recalls Jeremy. ‘But when we heard the first scream, we knew we were in business.’ The three-and-a-half week run sold out, as did the extended seven-week run at the Lyric Hammersmith.

‘Horror’s like comedy. Horror’s either scary or it’s not. Comedy’s either funny or it’s not. And people are the same all over the country. Everyone jumps out of their seat.’ He’s right. I was lucky not to find a wine-stained Galia landing in my lap.

TO book, visit www.ghoststoriestheshow.co.uk out TAKE Daily Mail theatre critic Quentin Letts’s verdict: ‘My heart was drumming away like Ringo Starr. This pantwetter of a night is a must for masochists. Anyone with a dicky heart should avoid it’ CAPTION(S):

Feel the fear: Petronella Wyatt and Richard Barber at the Ghost Stories show