It鈥檚 not easy putting a scary ghost story on the stage. But it can be done. And when it is done well, look out.
British playwright Andy Nyman (author of Ghost Stories) wrote, 鈥淲hen you hear an audience scream as one, night after night, and sometimes see them shaking in the street afterwards, you realize that horror onstage is something very special indeed and something that cinema cannot get close to.鈥�
To do it, you have to create a convincing illusion that the characters (or the audience members themselves) are in real danger. Here are a few of the plays and musicals that successfully raised hairs on the back of the audience鈥檚 collective neck:
1.
Seeing kids in danger is always especially scary, and s drama puts multiple kids in the worst kind of harm鈥檚 way. His play tells the story of an author named Katurian with a penchant for writing disturbing stories about children being tortured and killed, including one about a murderer who scalps the faces of his prey. A series of child murders in his community start to bear an uncanny resemblance to the ones in his stories. Is Katurian responsible? As detectives peel back the layers of the mystery, several of the stories are enacted and horrible truths are discovered.
2.
This play is the theatrical equivalent of sitting around a campfire telling ghostly tales. A gaggle of Irish people gather in a pub trying to outdo one another with chilling yarns. There are some pretty good ones, but the creepiest one is Jim鈥檚 story鈥攎ore horrifying than terrifying鈥攁bout a child abuser who, after his death, gets himself buried in a children鈥檚 cemetery so he can molest their tiny souls for eternity. I shivered as I wrote that. No special effects needed鈥攋ust a twisted vision.
3.
One of the great fake-outs in Broadway history, even the title seems designed to mislead. (SPOILER ALERT) Playwright Conor McPherson (again!) uses the whole show as a set-up to lull the audience until he springs the final booga-booga moment. John goes to his therapist friend Ian because John believes he is being visited by the ghost of his wife, who was mangled and killed in a dreadful car crash. Ian spends the entire play working John through all the psychological reasons for his hallucination and trying to free him from his obsession with his wife. John finally accepts his cure and moves on with his life. Two acts of reassurance soothe the audience into thinking, 鈥淲e feel sorry for this poor disturbed man.鈥� Then, without warning, we, too, see the ghost鈥攁nd it detonates like a lightning bolt. Now 飞别鈥檙别 haunted by her, and good luck opening a door on a dark night without thinking of her.
4.
Stephen Sondheim and s 1979 masterwork was based on a 19th-century penny-dreadful story about a revenge-seeking barber who slits the throats of his customers as he shaves them鈥攚hich is plenty creepy enough right there鈥攂ut then hands off the corpses to his partner Mrs. Lovett, who bakes them into meat pies. The story owes a great deal to the sensibilities (or lack thereof) of the Paris-based theatre company Le Th茅芒tre du Grand-Guignol, which specialized in brutally gruesome horror plays. A few standout moments in the American musical include the song 鈥淓piphany,鈥� in which Sweeney violates the fourth wall and threatens to kill the entire audience, the judge鈥檚 self-flagellation scene, and the moment when Sweeney slashes his first throat. In the original production, directed by , this moment was accompanied by a sickening gout of blood. Sweeney winds up with his throat slit by his own razor, Mrs. Lovett winds up roasted in her own oven, and both of their ghosts rise from the grave for the finale.
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You can argue about whether the music was good or bad, or if the one-time movie plot really worked onstage. But you have to tip your hat to the show鈥檚 special effects. For more than a century, savvy directors relied on a trick called Pepper鈥檚 Ghost Effect, which uses mirrors and lights to make actors disappear or transform onstage. Ghost added high-tech wizardry by to enable actors to put their hands through solid surfaces and vanish from center stage. These effects were more amazing than frightening, but the bad guy getting sucked through a vortex to Hell in Act II was truly horrifying.
6.
This one has been scaring the pants off people since almost before pants existed. Most theatre people refuse to say the title aloud lest it bring bad luck, referring to it instead as 鈥淭he Scottish Play.鈥� Set about a millennium ago in medieval Scotland, the play tells the story of a regional governor named Macbeth, who, along with his ambitious wife, plots to murder the king鈥攁nd anyone else in his way鈥攖o put himself on the throne. Shakespeare wrote plays in all genres, and this was firmly in the category of horror, along with Titus Andronicus, which has scenes of dismemberment and cannibalism. What sets Macbeth apart from its gory cousins is the fact that it has ample ghosts, witches, and other supernatural phenomena. Directors outdo themselves trying to make the appearance of the floating dagger and the revenant of Banquo as hair-raising as possible. The 2013 Broadway revival (one of four productions of the play that appeared in New York that year) had Banquo appear in startling lightning flashes. Cast members report that audience members sometimes screamed in fright during these scenes. The Bard loved theatrical spooky stuff. Which leads us to鈥�.
7.
Shakespeare鈥檚 culminating masterpiece is set in motion by the appearance of the ghost of Prince Hamlet鈥檚 father (a role said to have been originated by the author himself), who urges Hamlet to avenge his death. A popular feature of Jacobean revenge dramas, the ghost winds up receiving lots of company as the actions he sets in motion end in the murder of his wife, his son, his brother, and his main counselor鈥攏ot to mention catspaws Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who later got a play of their own, courtesy of .
8. Sleep No More
Before we leave Shakespeare, we should mention this immersive theatre adaptation of Macbeth, courtesy of the U.K. theatre company Punchdrunk, which has been playing since 2011 at a cluster of Manhattan warehouses dubbed the McKittrick Hotel. The adaptation takes place in many rooms on multiple floors simultaneously, and you could spend hours wandering around the shadowy, spooky halls and stairways trying to see the whole thing. A witches鈥� orgy, a hanging, a bathtub filled with blood, and a chamber full of dismembered dolls are just a few of the disturbing images visitors discover in the dark.
9.
It鈥檚 a tribute to the lasting power of Euripides鈥� tragedy that it still causes gasps 2,400 years after it was written. In the Miss Saigon-like story, barbarian princess Medea is lured away from her homeland by the charismatic warrior Jason, killing her father and brother in the process. But once back in his native Greece, Jason drops Medea for a local princess. With nowhere to turn, Medea strikes back at Jason in the worst way she can think of: She slaughters their two sons. The role has attracted major actors at the top of their game, including , , , and (in a musical version). But the 2002 Broadway revival with is still remembered for the sheer dreadfulness of the murder scene. In that version, the children鈥檚 blood drenched glass panels on the stage so the full horror could be experienced from every angle.
More Scary Plays
The murder mystery The Mousetrap has been running in London since 1952, but the second longest-running London play is the disturbing chiller The Woman in Black. The story of a woman who haunts the spot where her child died in a horrible accident has been onstage across the pond since 1989, but has never been seen on Broadway.
Based on an 1898 novel, The Turn of the Screw follows an English governess who comes to a country estate and discovers that a one-time sexual indiscretion has led to an eerie haunting. It has been adapted numerous times under various titles, including Tom Stoppard鈥檚 The Innocents.
's showcases bloodthirsty Transylvanian count. The 1927 original was a smash with , who went on to film immortality in the role. starred in a hit 1977 revival that ran 900 performances.
The Rocky Horror Show, , , Bat Boy, The Toxic Avenger, , 听and many others aim to send a shiver through audiences with tales of the supernatural.
Gentler Ghost Plays
Ghosts aren鈥檛 always frightening. When it comes to Noel Coward鈥檚 or its musical adaptation Elvira is far more beguiling than bloodcurdling.
At least two shows with ghosts in the title actually have no ghosts. s Ghosts is actually about venereal disease. The ghosts are metaphorical. And, of course, the phantom in is a living man, though his homicidal obsessions certainly frighten the denizens of the Paris Opera.
However, ghosts and spirits are, and have always been, popular onstage. , Angels in America, , , , Da, , , , , What鈥檚 Wrong With This Picture?, and are just a few of the shows visited at various times by phantoms. The characters in s 1923 hit don鈥檛 even realize they are ghosts until more than halfway through the show. marked himself as a potential star, playing the ghost of a murdered husband in the short-lived 2001 musical . The spirits of all the dead characters in return to escort Jean Valjean to the afterlife and sing once more in the finale. (Fun fact: It is the rare play with 13 letters in the title. A 13-letter title is considered to be bad luck in theatrical superstition鈥攖hough it doesn鈥檛 seem to have harmed Les Miz much.)
And, of course, the most widely produced and seen ghost story of the them all... is听, though only the final ghost, the wordless Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, is portrayed as menacing.
