Fear settles deep into your bones when you doubt your own senses.
Did I see something move, over there in the corner?
Is someone there?
Surely it’s just the wind, whispering.
Real terror lurks in the shadows at Allen Community College as the theatre and film department presents “The Woman in Black.” It’s a Victorian ghost story that will leave you looking over your shoulder, praying that nothing followed you home. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and again Nov. 20 and 21 at the Allen Theatre.
Director Tricia Stogsdill knows the effect the play has on its audiences and has wanted to direct it for years. She says there’s a reason “The Woman in Black” is the longest-running play on the West Bank in England for 25 years.
“This play draws you in and puts you under its spell, transports you to a world of foggy marshes and crumbling old houses,” Stogsdill said.
It’s a play-within-play. Allen’s stage is transformed, taking the audience back more than 100 years to an old Victorian theatre where two actors are rehearsing. A masterful duo — played by Gabe Wight of Garnett and Brigham Folk of Iola — skillfully unveil secrets as they recount the horrors one of them experienced years ago.
Arthur Kipps is asked to tell a ghost story: “You must know at least one ghost story. Everyone knows at least one.”
He will tell his story in the form of a play. It can be a little convoluted at first. Folk is the real-life Kipps and Wight is the actor who will be playing Kipps. In the program, Wight is billed as “Kipps” and Folk is “Actor.”
The actors shift between discussing the play and actually acting out the scenes, which also requires Wight and Folk to quickly alternate their roles as well. For the play, Folk portrays a variety of other characters, each with his own personality quirks and a different accent.
If there’s any part of the experience that stretches the imagination too far, it’s to believe that Folk needs acting lessons. In the beginning, Wight chides Folk’s stiff performance and advises him to deliver a more impassioned persona. But that will require Folk’s character — the real Arthur Kipps — to reconnect with the trauma he experienced when he encountered “The Woman in Black.”
What unfolds is a tale of terror. Kipps is hired to handle the accounts of an elderly woman who has died. He travels to her country manor, a dilapidated home filled with buried secrets. Kipps refuses to believe in ghosts until, after spending time alone in the house, he becomes convinced a phantom presence shares the space. He seeks answers from the townsfolk and is frustrated when their help is limited by fear.
Allen’s stage is cleverly dedicated to evoke symbols from your worst nightmares: Flickering candles, a creepy doll, furniture covered in sheets like ghosts, cobwebs, skulls, peeling wallpaper. There’s even a locked door. What atrocities does it hide?
As an actor, Wight conjures a perfect upper class Victorian gentleman, dignified and proper until extreme circumstances force him to descend into a shrieking madman. Wight excels, especially in those moments of abject terror.
