Simon Jenner January 10th 2024
Opening in a week where Andrew Lloyd-Webber reports a poltergeist in his Belgravia home, Paul Unwin’s The Enfield Hauntingarrives after a tour, at the Ambassadors Theatre directed by RSC veteran Angus Jackson starring beleaguered mother Peggy Hodgson (Catherine Tate) and technical investigator Maurice Grosse (David Threlfall). You might almost suspect the timing.
Indeed suspicion, hoaxes, accusations of delusions, psychosis underpin a socially rational response, now as in 1977, when the events meticulously recorded, filmed and copiously reported took place.
And there’s the rub on the lamp. 2:22 this isn’t. Based on documented events, there’s recruiting of related biographical material – personal trauma outside 284 Green Street, Enfield where this took place. It turns the haunting into a hunt for closure, dramatic reveals, climax.
It’s not easy. From 2012 Unwin interviewed chief investigator (offstage, often-cited) Guy Lyon-Playfair. Unwin’s heard the tapes, watched films. He’s invested in the project’s sincerity beyond the scatter of actual hoaxes the two Hodgson daughters played, which complicate the evidence, but not this narrative.
Mr Grosse has started arriving at times even outside his brief. Threlfall’s ex-military tech man, clipped yet warm, fatherly yet not intrusive, has become a part of the furniture. But the furniture’s moving about, lights explode, gas fires are ripped out suddenly and noise and gruff voices emit from the wallpaper. (In the helpful programme summary the wallpaper tears itself off the walls in a single night.) Crucially there’s the actions and voice of Janet (Ella Schrey-Yeats). As Unwin relates (also in the programme), his own voice imitating the sounds from the tape recorder became hoarse in seconds. Janet vocally achieved the impossible; that’s what we get here.
The sound design which allows Schrey-Yeats these growly moments is beautifully synched. Schrey-Yeats herself though in an assured stage debut is a bundle of stiff and suddenly floppy terror, managing to seem both an 11-year-old full of backchat, and unearthly, possessed not by demons but the fear of being pushed out of her own life.
It soon becomes clear that a real-life tragedy in Grosse’s life informs his actions. Unwin’s looking for connections and it’s a convincing fit. Licence is taken; who cares?
It’s no secret the production was spooked opening in Brighton on November 14th. So knowing something of this it’s a pleasure to report the cast have brought the production to a polished, human conviction. Tate shines as harassed Peggy, both pulled to sympathy for Threlfall’s decent Grosse, but repelled by his class and assumptions. And there’s more to discover.
Equally Peggy finds neighbour Rey (Mo Sesay, energetic, pragmatic, this Rey clearly not able to stay away) irritating. Rey’s sceptical, dismissive but full of solicitude and indeed warmth for Peggy, he’s nevertheless too sure.
With attempted delicacy Grosse suggests Rey might make a decent protector. Peggy dismisses this just as she does Grosse’s assumptions her violent ex Eddy is any worse than any other Eddy out there she would have inevitably married. It’s bleakly truthful. Unwin chronicles cultural assumptions on the change. Peggy’s leading her own quiet revolution away from men to her own agency. It’s the heart of the play.
There’s vivid support too from elder daughter Margaret (Grace Molony) already at 14 sexually aware, taunting Grosse with herself or suggesting he’s a “shirt-lifter” to younger brother Jimmy (Noah Leggot on this occasion, assured and playful with Threlfall and Tate) and always off to the “pardonez-moi” or bathroom, a touching skit on gentility.
There’s a wider shadowy cast but as Grosse’s wife Betty, Neve McIntosh makes an extended foray into shock, outrage and ultimately pity. As a neighbour with reveals Gareth Radcliffe brings not only truth but much-needed humour to his role. He gets one of the biggest laughs when he rejects the offered chair.
Lee Newby’s set is a star feature: a cut-away house with the expected ragged brick edges comprising of backdoors and a cluttered living room topped by a bedroom with stairs. The height of a luxury is an Action Man tank. Furniture’s late 1960s shabby Erkol-style, perfect for a poverty-stricken family. The only jolt is the Eames-like modern chair the Hodgsons inherited. Too posh – and a bit modern – for 1977; and when you learn its provenance, you wonder they don’t throw it out. Maybe it time-travelled. Newby’s down-at-heel clothes fall like dreary mantles.
Lit by Neil Austin in a series of light dimmers, splutters, glows and glares, sound design by Carolyn Downing must take at least equal credit: particularly the voice-synching, along with Sam Lisher’s sparse, telling use of video design.
Unwin’s sifted the evidence, comes to a clear decision about what he believes: the effects, which are subtle, not scary (those who look for that miss the point) underscore this. Perhaps the world divides into those who’ve experienced phenomena (at time of writing, a large number of Radio 3 listeners chime with Lloyd Webber) and those who haven’t.
I’m in the latter category (uniquely in my father’s family), heeding my father’s “Don’t believe it till it happens to you.” Such a poltergeist apparently irritated him and his brother. But when it ripped bedsheets off the latter’s girlfriend my father balanced on a stair-rail, detached his tin leg and hurled it downstairs with oaths. Terrified, I assume, the poltergeist never returned. Still I wasn’t there.
The conclusion is hard-won, as Tate’s Peggy, banishing everyone and everything, comes into her power. That, beyond the haunting and phenomena Unwin tilts towards, is the take-away. An 85-minute time-capsule, solidly realised, not time-travelling ghosts, are what lends this sincerity-tethered tale a frisson of recognition.