The woman in black
The Woman In Black Review
On the 7th of February 2012 we saw The Woman in Black in the Fortune Theatre, London. The play is set in the Victorian or Edwardian era, but no dates are given about when the events within it take place.
The play is a play within a play, with the character of Arthur Kipps retelling a story from his past to an Actor who he hopes will play him on stage for his family and friends. Kipps is a solicitor who was sent to a remote house in the market town of Crythin Gifford to attend to the affairs of a dead client. The majority of the action of the story takes place at Eel Marsh House, which is cut off from civilisation when the tide comes in. While at the house however, sorting through the affairs of the client, Alice Drablow, Kipps encounters a series of supernatural occurrences centred upon the eponymous Woman in Black.
The central themes of the play are familiar to Gothic horror fiction such as Collins’ Woman in White or Bronte’s Jane Eyre; the character of Kipps is a father, and the character of the Woman in Black is a mother, and so fear of children or infanticide, as well as the fear of death are very prevalent in the story. Not only this, but social morality is also a theme in the same way as it is in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, or Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. The ghost in The Woman in Black is haunting the characters because she has a message for society about the mistreatment of women. Another central theme is the idea of fear and fantasy, in that Kipps wants people to believe his story which, bearing in mind he was the only one who experienced the haunting at Eel Marsh House, nobody seems to. He is therefore planning to put on the performance with the Actor to tell his story, which creates a sense of dramatic irony: at the end of the play the Woman in Black is proved to be haunting Kipps still, and has been playing her own part throughout the story.
There are only three actors in the play, one of whom appears rarely. The two
On the 7th of February 2012 we saw The Woman in Black in the Fortune Theatre, London. The play is set in the Victorian or Edwardian era, but no dates are given about when the events within it take place.
The play is a play within a play, with the character of Arthur Kipps retelling a story from his past to an Actor who he hopes will play him on stage for his family and friends. Kipps is a solicitor who was sent to a remote house in the market town of Crythin Gifford to attend to the affairs of a dead client. The majority of the action of the story takes place at Eel Marsh House, which is cut off from civilisation when the tide comes in. While at the house however, sorting through the affairs of the client, Alice Drablow, Kipps encounters a series of supernatural occurrences centred upon the eponymous Woman in Black.
The central themes of the play are familiar to Gothic horror fiction such as Collins’ Woman in White or Bronte’s Jane Eyre; the character of Kipps is a father, and the character of the Woman in Black is a mother, and so fear of children or infanticide, as well as the fear of death are very prevalent in the story. Not only this, but social morality is also a theme in the same way as it is in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, or Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. The ghost in The Woman in Black is haunting the characters because she has a message for society about the mistreatment of women. Another central theme is the idea of fear and fantasy, in that Kipps wants people to believe his story which, bearing in mind he was the only one who experienced the haunting at Eel Marsh House, nobody seems to. He is therefore planning to put on the performance with the Actor to tell his story, which creates a sense of dramatic irony: at the end of the play the Woman in Black is proved to be haunting Kipps still, and has been playing her own part throughout the story.
There are only three actors in the play, one of whom appears rarely. The two