Anyone seen the stage show? What's it like

SPOILERS AHEAD

I read the book when I was in my 5th year at School, around 2007 and really loved it. It came to the theatre in my town sometime in 2008. I went to see it and it terrified me. The screams in the causeway were particularly scary and the two scenes that always stuck in my mind were the scene when "The Actor" as Kipps walks down the corridor and there's the loud scream and then the scene at the end where the woman appears and stands in front of the the trap that Arthur's wife and son are on. Bloody scary!!

I kept annoying some family members into travelling to London to see the show there (needless to say I'm still waiting!) But I was excited when it was announced a new tour was hitting my home town and I saw it tonight.

Sadly it wasn't as good as the last tour. It all seemed very mellow-dramatic too much emphasis on the show being a play and just a bit silly. I just read before coming on here that the show is actually still going in London so it's a different cast and production team which probably didn't help.

I still want to see it in London and urge everyone to go and see it and just have a good laugh!

I've seen it at the Fortune theatre in London, and found its lighting and sound design brilliantly effective - in fact all the theatrical illusions were magical and spellbinding - and also thought the performances of the two actors were exceptionally convincing. For me, though, it was ultimately more of a shocker than a chiller. Many of the shocks are genuinely terrifying, and the suspense created in scenes involving little more than ominous noises, flashing torchlight or a lit match is almost unbearable. In the version I saw, however, there was in my opinion one significant misstep, which occurred in the graveyard scene when the woman appears and disappears very quickly - it's a cheap "boo!" effect that doesn't allow us to see Kipps feeling pity for her commingled with creeping fear of her, gradually doubting that she's alive/earthly. To convey this, the script relies on basically quoting extracts of prose from the book.

So, of the three dramatized versions of the story - this film (1989), the play, and the latest movie (2012) - I would say that, for me, the one that most accurately captured the eerie atmosphere of the book was actually this movie, the TV movie. I think because it conveyed a stronger impression that Jennet/The Woman died in abject misery, so that the subsequent scares are more infused with real emotion. It really nails the cemetery scene, expertly building up the reveal of the woman and opting for a more human, less ghostly or corpse-like facial expression, concentrating more on her grief and misery for our first good look at her (and conveying the "desperate yearning malevolence" aspect more fully in a particularly memorable scene later on).

The play is very, very good though and definitely worth seeing.