Some say a haunting is like an afterimage. A fleeting memory igniting the dark, like a glowing ember caught in the wind before fluttering out. If that’s so, then the revelation that a character in 2:22 – A Ghost Story used to have sex to UK band Massive Attack’s seminal trip-hop while at uni feels like a summoned presence many of us of a certain age might want to exorcise.
That spookily reminiscent detail places British playwright Danny Robins’ Olivier Award-nominated West End show in a very specific time and place. Though his London-set story of young couple and new parents, Jenny (Gemma Ward) and Sam (Remy Hii), has been transported to Melbourne’s suburbs. She’s a lapsed Catholic convinced that the thumping bumps and mournful tears she hears in their daughter’s nursery at 2:22am every night is a ghost. He’s a fervent mansplainer who insists science always has the answer, so much so that Jenny essentially sublimated her beliefs for a breather from his berating (she’s still hiding a crucifix in a kitchen cupboard, though).
Jenny’s annoyed Sam returned from a stargazing trip to NSW’s Warrumbungle National Park only just in time for the arrival of their first dinner party guests to the tattered wallpaper old house they’ve only half renovated – props to Anna Fleischle’s fantastic set. John Wick star Ruby Rose plays Sam’s former uni mate Lauren, and there’s clearly unspoken history between them. But she’s brought along her new boyfriend, Ben, a builder played by former Neighbours star Daniel MacPherson. With the guests caught in the crossfire of this marital showdown, their obvious discomfort is turned into a drinking game as they decide to wait up.
It’s a fun set-up played too broadly by director Matthew Dunster, who brings a pantomime’s boisterousness to a show that would be better served by being subtly unnerving. The starry casting leans heavily into this go big or go home approach. MacPherson brings the most stage experience and it shows, his easy charm able to ride out the more obvious turns of Robins’ script. An interesting aside by Ben about how these old houses, only affordable to cashed-up couples, are haunted by the hard labour of the working class gets short shrift. It leans into stereotype, too, with Ben casually racist in a way that’s never unpacked.
Ward brings a lived-in believability to Jenny, even if her paired-back performance gets a little lost in the heavy-handed direction of the ensemble. Hii’s task is thankless, playing an irksome character who’s stuck on one note. Rose, with a likeable energy, fares best before she has to depict Lauren as increasingly drunk. There are neat touches, like the group’s back and forth on why ghosts, if true, aren’t omnipresent. The idea that they might be like Facebook memories, selected at random by an algorithm, or that they are somehow comparable to refugees facing a harrowing journey and too few surviving, is intriguing. But too much is OTT.
The very best ghost stories deal in our deepest fears of what may lurk in the dark, no matter how logical our approach by day. And so 2:22 – A Ghost Story works best in its quietest moments of goosebump tingling, like a second-act candlelit séance led by Ben, who grew up with a mother who dealt in such supernatural summoning. Palms laid out on a table that may or may not move have the power to hold our collective breath. My eyes traced upwards to a chandelier hanging high above, expecting the faintest flicker. There’s power, too, in the 24-like digital clock ticking over towards 2:22.
Effective initially, sound designer Ian Dickinson’s decision to pierce almost every time jump with the shriek of rutting foxes is far from fantastic, and a detail that should surely have been switched to possums here. Those blasts of Massive Attack also grow tiresome, and the infernal glow lighting designer Lucy Carter traces around the stage’s proscenium arch too liberally used, leaving us wishing for more candles. When it finally comes to revealing what, exactly, is causing the punctual, possibly paranormal disturbance upstairs, the predictable twist is all too silly to stick. But judging by the audience’s hoots and hollers, this humorous enough haunting lands regardless.
'2:22 – A Ghost Story' is showing at Her Majesty's Theatre until August 22. For more information and to book tickets, head to the website.