The final moments of this play are so unexpected and shocking that I’m left sitting on my seat. The plot twist in 2:22 A Ghost Story comes out of the blue, and is probably the most unsettling part of this West End thriller making its New Zealand premiere at Circa Theatre.

When I later listen to the script while writing this review, there are just a couple of clues: a sharp eye and ear and you might know what is actually going on. It’s worth watching the play just to be startled at the end. [More]

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Ghost stories have been around forever. Plautus, Pliny the Younger and Seneca all played with the idea of the dead communicating with mortals before the likes of Thomas Kyd and William Shakespeare summoned spectres to the stage. Wiki tells us Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu inaugurated ‘Golden Age of the Ghost Story’ between the decline of the Gothic novel in the 1830s and the start of the First World War.

The ghost story told around a campfire at night, or in the dark bunkroom of a seaside batch or tramping hut, has been a rite of passage for generations. Its primary purpose is to spook the listeners and it hones our storytelling skills. Then there are the apocryphal stories of haunted houses, not to mention theatres. The ghost stories I value most are those that use the genre for social commentary, as Charles Dickens did with A Christmas Carol.

2:22 A Ghost Story is written by Danny Robins, creator of the hit BBC podcasts Uncanny and The Battersea Poltergeist. In his Director’s Note for this Wellington season, Peter Feeney claims, “It’s so well written that it confronts simultaneously as an invitation to greatness and rebuke for mediocrity.” The same difference of opinion has haunted Agatha Christie’s still-running The Mousetrap since it premiered in 1952 (reaching its 30,000th London West End performance on 19 March 2025). Why am I comparing that whodunnit with this ghost story? Because in both cases they end with a curtain-call exhortation to the audience not to divulge the ending.  

The impressive set for Rollicking Entertainment’s production of 2:22 A Ghost Story in Circa One, designed by Chris Reddington (whose work in Christchurch has been noted on Theatreview since 2008), captures the kitchen, dining and living area of an old house being renovated in a rapidly gentrifying part of London. A stargazing telescope stands by the out-of-keeping aluminium-framed windows and door, which leads to an outdoor area filled with greenery and a brick outhouse. A small child’s soft and wooden toys litter the floor in front of a sofa. An old-fashioned china cabinet and wall heater (connected to a boiler) adorn the stage-right wall. A sliding door leads to a small modern bathroom. Intriguingly, a horizontal artwork referencing the tino rangatiratanga design hangs above the glass doors that lead to the hallway, and stairs to the bedrooms above.

I assume this boxed-in set will make for excellent acoustics but it turns out that while the actors’ voices resonate well, I’m not the only one who finds some dialogue indistinct for the first 10-15 minutes, until the actors and the audience somehow tune into each other. Have we missed crucial exposition? Who knows? The consensus is that it all comes right in the second half and I trust whatever it was will resolve itself.

A prologue scene finds Jenny (Pamela Sidhu) up a ladder, brushing test-pot paint onto the wall above the aluminium window frames. An unearthly screech – a bird? a cat? a rodent? – doesn’t faze her (later someone refers to it as “the unholy sound of bestial sex”); nor do the noises from a baby monitor on the kitchen bench. But there is a little jump-scare moment that teases us. The digital clock high above the inside door reads 02:21. Blackout.

When the lights come on again, someone else is at the stove, stirring the contents of a large pan and sipping wine. This turns out to be Lauren (Serena Cotton), a very good friend of Sam (Regan Taylor) who is Jenny’s husband and has just returned from a trip away. Lauren, who is from the USA and works in mental health, doesn’t hold down relationships for very long. Her latest partner is Ben (Jack Sergent-Shadbolt), a Cockney tradesman who is renovating her place.

If Jenny’s occupation before she became a mother is mentioned, I don’t catch it. Sam, however, is a science teacher who met Jenny (a teacher too, perhaps?) at a refugee camp while both were on their ‘do good’ year. She fell in love with his telling of mythological stories about the constellations they observed while lying together under the dark sky – which is interesting in light of his subsequent insistence that science-based facts are the only source of ‘truth’ in this world. That’s what stopped Jenny believing in the God whose icons continue to festoon her old family home.

All this and more emerges as we tune into the intimate house-warming dinner party they are having with Lauren and Ben while the baby sleeps, or not, upstairs. Humorously offset by the interactions the inhabitants have with Alexa, the virtual assistant that controls their environment, the question of whether or not this house is haunted comes to the fore when Jenny reveals the unnerving experiences she has had, at 2:22 on successive mornings, while Sam was away.

Sam is increasingly scathing, not least in his scorn for the paranormal tales Ben relates about his childhood in a neighbourhood not unlike this one. Lauren also tells a story about seeing a schoolfriend in a glass elevator after … (spoiler averted). The question of who believes in what also emerges in Jenny’s need for Sam to believe in her. As for what happens to ‘Mr Bear’ in the bathroom – how does Sam mansplain that?

A spectacular thunderstorm – lighting design, Marcus McShane; sound design, Dan Elliott – sets us up for a Second Act that interrogates the ‘do ghosts exist?’ more rigorously and intensifies the animosity between Sam and Ben, which may be about more than just science v the supernatural. Meanwhile, Jenny becomes even more distressed at not being believed.

And which side is Lauren on? “I’m Switzerland,” she says, and has another drink.  

The changing natures of the relationships between characters are well delineated and as engaging as the central debate. One aspect that is doubtless unique to this production is the Māoritanga dimension Regan Taylor brings to his role – and of course it is perfectly credible that Sam is a Kiwi. We may wonder where he might stand on Māori perceptions of the spirits of tīpuna, if Sam had been written that way. That becomes just one of the many questions that form as we watch, and that are worth coming back to in the aftermath of the climactic revelation.

It is Ben who delivers the social commentary wallop regarding what gentrification has done to people like him and their communities. This offers a powerful reason for the house to be haunted – possibly by Frank, the deceased former owner. And it’s Ben who instigates the round-table seance in the hope of contacting his spirit – which leads to effectively spooky special effects (credited to Shiloh Dobie, who is also the costume designer). I expect this is why Rollicking Entertainment got the rights to this play (see: The Dunstan Creek Haunting).

The ’real world’ returns with the arrival, at 2:22am, of two Police Officers (VUW Interns and ASMs Teddy Coneill and Josh Lees), about which I can say no more. As intimated above, this compels us to see everything that has gone before through a different lens. When you find yourself questioning the internal logic of the play, I suggest you ask yourself, whose story is it? Whose experience have we been privy to and why has it manifested this way?

In its form and substance, there is more to 2:22 A Ghost Story than initially meets our eyes, ears and brains. Schedule time to discuss it afterwards.

Photos by Lewis Ferris.

Spooky Postscript:
Every year, I create and number a folder for each of the shows I edit and publish. The number for 2:22 A Ghost Story just happens to be 222.

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