The Woman in Black

Arthur Kipps, a middle-aged solicitor, hires a theatre and the services of a professional actor to help him re-enact – and thereby hopefully exorcise – a ghostly event which befell him many years previously with horrifyingly tragic results. From the cluttered stage, Kipps begins to read his story: painfully, self-consciously and hesitantly at first, but, coached by the actor and aided by the theatrical artifice, he grows in confidence an ability as he assumes a variety of roles and the play moves from narration to enactment. The actor portrays the young Kipps, sent north by his London firm to settle the estate of an elderly recluse, the late Mrs. Drablow, in whose isolated marshland house Kipps encounters the Woman in Black. This specter, seeking vengeance, attaches herself to Kipps and unleashes a macabre sequence of events which culminate in a truly chilling twist in the play’s final moments.