2:22 A Ghost Story

People have long been fascinated by the prospect of seeing a ghost, or witnessing paranormal activity.  Since Roman times people have heard thumps on walls, or seen objects flying around rooms. If you touch the walls of the Colosseum in Rome you can almost hear the sounds of the gladiators battling for their lives.  We are all made of energy, so where does the energy go to once we have passed on?

As a child being brought up in an atheist family, Danny Robins began to wonder whether there was another realm where magic existed.  His interest grew and as an adult he began to investigate the prospect of an afterlife when he’d heard a credible ghost story from a friend. 

Danny spent years interviewing people who claimed to have seen ghosts. This collection of stories spawned several podcast series, Haunted, The Battersea Poltergeist and then Uncanny for the BBC.  These stories formed the basis for the play 2:22 A Ghost Story, which opened in the West End in June 2021 and was nominated for three Laurence Olivier Awards in 2022.  The show won awards at the WhatsOnStage Awards for Best New Play, Best Actress for Lily Allen and Best Supporting Actor for Jake Wood.

“THERE’S SOMETHING IN OUR HOUSE. I HEAR IT EVERY NIGHT, AT THE SAME TIME”

Jenny believes her new home is haunted, but her husband Sam isn’t having any of it. They argue with their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren and new partner Ben. Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening, and that something is getting closer, so they’re going to stay up… until 2:22… and then they’ll know.

Three Little Birds actress Shvorne Marks, gives an impassioned performance as Jenny who is desperate to protect her baby from the unknown. Eastenders actor James Bye plays the sceptical husband Sam and has a very strong physical stage presence, showing he’s not just a TV actor. Natalie Casey is Sam’s old friend Lauren who steadily gets more and more drunk throughout the evening.  Grant Kilburn is her new beau Ben who tries to help resolve the mystery.

Expect a lot of very loud, unexpected noises to make you jump in your seats. However, the dialogue was full of unnecessary expletives in the first act, which I didn’t think is how middle-aged, middle-class people would behave at a dinner party and was quite distracting.  There were also a lot of young children in the audience and perhaps they needed to be made aware of the language.  The second act was much more focused on the characters and the dialogue was much tighter, with minimal expletives.

Of course, the classic ghost story play, The Ghost Train, was written in 1923 by Arnold Ridley who went on to play Private Godrey in Dad’s Army.  The play was made into a film in 1931, but the play continues to be performed over a hundred years after it was written.

2:22 A Ghost Story has now been performed around the UK, in Los Angeles, Ireland and Australia.  Will this play still be around in a hundred years’ time? No plot spoiler alerts here but if you love the genre of the supernatural and unexplained, the tour continues into July and further details can be found at: https://222aghoststory.com/uk-tour-tickets/

Reviewed by:

Yvonne Delahaye (X @yvonnedelahaye)

8.6.26