THE WOMAN in Black is not for the faint of heart.

If you are anything like me you will probably spend two-thirds of the play huddled against the person next to you (yes, he came with me) for emotional support.

The moment when the eponymous woman in black, a menacing spectre, appears before almost immediately vanishing, her haunting screams echoing around the theatre, made me jump so high in my seat I was close to shrieking myself.

The plot is simple enough.

A former solicitor, Arthur Kipps, haunted by an otherworldly encounter in his past has committed his horrific experience to paper and is now hoping to tell his story to his friends and family to put the ghosts to rest—quite literally.

He enlists the help of an actor to perfect his elocution and delivery.

The pair end up rehearsing his script and gradually performing as if it were a play, with the actor taking up the role Mr Kipps while Arthur helps with the minor parts to better bring his tale to life.

Mr Kipps, once an ambitious young man eager to climb the ladder at his firm, was sent some twenty years ago to an isolated seaside village to settle the estate of recently-deceased widow Mrs Alice Drablow.

He attends the lady’s funeral where a strange woman with a pale, spectral face, clad in black, stands behind him at the church and again later at the cemetery. When he inquires about the identity of the woman, the terrified villagers refuse to answer his questions.

It is only when Arthur moves into Mrs Drablow’s isolated home, Eel Marsh House, for a couple of days to go through her papers that the sheer horror of the events which unfolded at the house and the truth about the vengeful woman in black are explained to him. However he pays a terrible price for his trespass.

The power of suggestion is key in this nerve-wracking production.

Although the woman in black sneaking onto the stage never failed to draw a shriek or twenty from the audience and certainly made me jump in my seat every time, it is the sounds of a chair rocking, and the pyrotechnic dance between pitch blackness, a blinding ghostly white light and fiery red glow, which truly produced and reinforced the claustrophobic air of the play.

Just like Arthur in Mrs Drablow’s mansion, we are at the mercy of an invisible force (in our case a skilful director and his tech team.) Whichever trick they played on us only increased our sense of dread.

The cast, director Robin Herford, who filled in for Julian Forsyth initially billed to play Arthur, and Antony Eden, the actor, were perfect. Robin Herford in particular was really impressive considering he was not actually meant to be on stage at all. He shoulders at least four different characters throughout the Woman in Black, each more convincing than the last.

A roller-coaster of emotions which will leave you too scared to be left on your own in the dark for days to come.