Audiences at Circa Theatre’s 2:22 A Ghost Story don’t need to believe in the supernatural to be surprised by what’s coming, writes Sarah Catherall.
A couple of weeks out from opening night, actor Pamela Sidhu is struggling to sleep. Not because of the stress of rehearsing her lines for the play, 2:22 A Ghost Story, but because she is fearful of crossing over too deeply into the supernatural world she believes in. Like her character, Jenny, the wife and mother she will inhabit in the play, Sidhu believes in ghosts.
Making its New Zealand premiere at Circa Theatre, 2:22 A Ghost Story tells the story of Jenny, who is alarmed by what she thinks is a ghost appearing at 2:22am every night, and she wants to protect her baby. But her scientist husband Sam (Regan Taylor) is a sceptic who doesn’t believe her. They’re renovating their house in a rapidly gentrifying part of London and invite another couple over for a housewarming dinner party. The drama unfolds as they all stay up until 2.22am to see whether the ghost will appear.
This is sensitive material for 30-something Sidhu, who was most recently on our screens as a police sergeant in Queenstown-based police drama A Remarkable Place to Die.
Sitting in the Circa Theatre rehearsal room she turns quiet as she tells the Listener: “I’m a spiritual person and I definitely believe there’s more to us as human beings than our physical body.
“Because I believe, I’ve had a lot of trouble sleeping. I’m afraid of what I might open up or what I might bring back home. But this is just me and the play meeting each other and I always knew that would be the case.’’
The work by London playwright Danny Robins debuted four years ago with pop star Lily Allen in the role of Jenny. Allen, the daughter and sister of actors Keith and Alfie, respectively, was nominated for a best actress Laurence Olivier award for her performance.
It is, says Sidhu, a “brilliant script’’, but the material is sensitive. “It’s no surprise to me that I feel more on edge in my personal life. But I think it’s great. Jenny is nervous – who wouldn’t be, if she’s trying to protect her family? Not that I’m trying to go method on it all. But I’m appreciative of where I’m at and the crossover where the character and I meet.’’
The play’s director, Peter Feeney, discovered 2:22 A Ghost Story last year when a fellow member of his Auckland play-reading club returned from seeing the drama in London.
Feeney describes himself as a sceptic yet he thinks the script will lure and grip theatre audiences. His view is that the more extreme society gets the more extreme art needs to be.
“Ghost stories seem to inhabit such an important part of our imaginations. Even for sceptics, there’s a part of us that wants to be seriously frightened and challenged in a safe and secure environment.
“I don’t look at it as a horror or a fright night. It’s a story with so much going on, and it’s more of a rising of stakes. It’s a mystery. It’s so clever and the audience won’t see what is coming.’’
2:22 A Ghost Story is challenging for any director because the drama unfolds as much in the still moments as during the action. The audience waits, while the theatre is pin-drop quiet. The set – a house in mid-renovation – and sound effects are central to the story. When a baby cries it sounds different depending on who hears it – just as with supposed spirits, when some people hear things others dismiss.
Says Feeney: “We can go to a theatre and see two people on a blank stage, and that’s fine, too, but to actually have a full entertainment experience takes theatre to another level.’’
Feeney and the four-strong cast are being guided by spiritual communicator Lorraine Sinclair, a project manager in her day job, who is advising the cast and “keeping them safe’’. She tells the Listener: “I’m supporting in terms of the energies. When we work topics like this, we can open up doorways for ghosts and spirits to contact us. It’s important for us to respect those energies,” she says.
2:22 A Ghost Story is at Circa Theatre Wellington from September 13 to October 13.
Mother knows best
Sophie Roberts thinks she’s struck gold in Pulitzer winner Paula Vogel.
“People don’t send us scripts at the bottom of the world; you have to hunt them down.”
Sophie Roberts, outgoing artistic director of Auckland’s Silo Theatre Company, is wandering through a draughty rehearsal space searching for a place where our Zoom connection won’t lag or glitch.
It feels very “bottom of the world”, given Roberts is in a room that resembles a cross between a barn, storage shed and makeshift dressing room, and she’s rugged up as if she’s set for a day in the snow.
In reality she’s on a lunchbreak from rehearsals for Mother Play, which last year premiered on Broadway with Jessica Lange in the leading role. Here, Jennifer Ludlam plays hard-bitten, gin-drinking and chain-smoking Herman family matriarch Phyllis, with Amanda Tito and Tim Earl as her children Martha and Carl.
The kids are itching to leave the nest(s) – shaky places plagued by cockroaches, ruthless landlords and casual violence – but Phyllis isn’t so sure about letting them spread their wings in an increasingly sexually liberated USA.
Like Circa Theatre’s 2:22 A Ghost Story, Mother Play is by an acclaimed international playwright. Paula Vogel, the first openly gay writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1998 with How I Learned to Drive, is a towering figure in contemporary US theatre.
Roberts heard of Vogel when she was studying at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School two decades ago. A monologue from How I Learned to Drive was so popular as an audition piece that Roberts estimates she heard it four times in one day.
“I love how her work manages to be deeply felt and deeply funny at the same time,” she says of Vogel. “It swings the whole time, with some startling tonal shifts.”
Roberts says looking for suitable plays for Silo involved reading overseas reviews in titles such as The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Guardian and then approaching agents and theatre companies for more information. She sought plays that complemented Silo’s ethos of staging contemporary work that champions new forms of storytelling.
Yes, Roberts acknowledges, there were times when she was asked where exactly New Zealand was. So does she think having an internationally renowned playwright on the bill helps sell tickets?
“It’s hard to say. I would hope it has some sort of impact but theatre is a pretty niche proposition here in Aotearoa … at a company like Silo, presenting new work all the time, we’re not putting on the likes of Shakespeare and the old classics, so you’re kind of having to educate and introduce an audience to a playwright and their work every time you put on a show.”
She’s confident taking a leap of faith and going to Mother Play will be worth it. “When I read about Mother Play I thought it sounded audacious, quite camp and with a big powerful female performance at its heart. It’s brash and it’s big and feels really true.”
Mother Play is at Q Theatre, Rangatira, Auckland, until September 20.