TAKING your seat for The Woman in Black is a distinctly unnerving experience for a first-timer.

Are you going to leave the stalls somehow altered? For the enduring power of the play is partly in its ability to silence survivors of the experience or limit them to the chillingly guarded review: “I was really scared.”

The hype surrounding the West End classic and its capacity to unnerve even the lion-hearted puts you in a peculiar mental zone that both longs to be terrified, while simultaneously defying the actors to try their hardest.

Am I going to be a screamer? you find yourself worrying as the lights dim. A gasper? A silent shaker in the stalls? Or, perhaps worst of all, the one person unmoved?

Self-consciousness was not allayed by the partial dimming of lights over the Churchill Theatre audience, so they were sinisterly informed – you too are part of this tale.

“Draw on your emotions and on our imaginations,” initially cocky, garrulous The Actor Antony Eden demanded of bumbling Arthur Kipps who was played by Julian Forsyth.

The theatre of the mind was set with this appeal to imagination and with just a couple of chairs, a hamper basket and a clothes rail to serve as the main props against a ghoulish-grey backdrop fitting for Miss Haversham.

The pared-down set for the tale of a lawyer obsessed with a curse taps into primitive fears that special effects cannot hope to compete with, and perfectly timed lighting and sound explosions worked like a thunderstorm on a small child.

By the end of the first half, Anthony Eden and Julian Forsyth had gripped the audience, with Kipps having shed his semi-irritating awkward persona to play the array of impressively different parts belonging to his own ghost story.

But - and it’s a heart-stoppingly big but - of all the reactions I anticipated from this adaptation of Susan Hill’s quintessential horror tale, laughter was not one of them.

The production unexpectedly infused comedy into the thriller that, on the whole, added a further eerie dimension in that the safe world of laughter could collapse at any moment.

The comic interspersions warmed the audience to the actors but perhaps placed too much emphasis on the climax - because now they really wanted to be scared as a contrast.

Instead, what should have sent screams rippling around the stalls, triggered repressed sniggers or embarrassed silence.

For the woman in black’s final appearance had the effect of a pantomime dame and broke the dramatic tension into titters instead of terror.

It effectively ruined the ending, as the energy painstakingly built up by Eden and Forsyth had dispersed and the effect of the famous twist was lost.

I believe subsequent performances are redeemable because it was otherwise very solid, indeed excellent at points – with blood-curdling screams, a clever manipulation of torchlight and the iconic rocking chair scene well executed.

But for a play that is about suggestion and what lurks at the periphery of the stage and mind, it would have been infinitely better if the final scene had kept The Woman mysterious, instead of close up, with a clearly painted clown face and over-the-top comic gestures.

The Woman in Black runs April 15 to 20 at 7.30pm at the Churchill Theatre, with additional 2.30pm performances on the 18 and the 20.

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