# Ghost Stories (play)

Ghost Stories is a one-act horror play written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman.

## Background

The play was conceived after Nyman walked past the theatre which had hosted The Woman in Black for over 30 years, and he realised there hadn't been a horror play produced since that time. He contacted his childhood friend Jeremy Dyson with the idea of a new horror play like The Vagina Monologues, with three narrators on stage telling ghost stories. The two were commissioned by Sean Holmes, the newly appointed artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith theatre in London, to write the play.

## Production history

The play made its world premiere at the Liverpool Playhouse on 4 February 2010 in a co-production with the Lyric Hammersmith where it transferred on 1 March 2010. Following the run, it transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End where it played from 25 June 2010 until 19 June 2011. The play was revived at the Arts Theatre on 13 February 2014 and ran until March 2015.
In 2015, the show was produced at the Sydney Opera House before going on an Australian National Tour concluding at the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia in October 2016. The play was also performed in Canada (2011), Russia (2012), Peru (2015), China (2018), Finland (2018) and The Netherlands (2019).
The original creative team reunited to stage the production for an extended run at the Lyric Hammersmith, marking the end of co-director Holmes' tenure at the theatre from 29 March until 11 May 2019. The production transferred to the Ambassadors Theatre from 4 October to 4 January 2020 before embarking on a UK tour from January 2020 at The Alexandra, Birmingham. On 27 March 2020 it was announced the remainder of the tour had been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2019, the playtext was published by Nick Hern Books.
In January 2025, the production will tour the UK again, opening at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley from 17 January.
The play is notable for running only 80 minutes (with no interval) and for its publicized warnings advising against anyone under the age of 15 attending. The marketing of the show outside the theatre is unusual in that there are no production photographs, just stills and video monitors showing the shocked reactions of audience members. An announcement at the end of the play asks the audience to "keep the secrets of Ghost Stories" so that new audiences do not have the experience spoiled with any prior information about the play.

## Plot

Reviews of the show have confined themselves to outlining the basic structure of the plot, which revolves around Dr. Goodman, a Professor of Parapsychology (Andy Nyman) delivering a lecture on ghost stories. In the lecture, he discusses a website featuring ghostly pictures, scienceofghosts.com. He has recorded interviews with three people who claim to have had a supernatural experience. Each story seems to hinge on guilty feelings. As each interview is played back, the story is re-enacted on stage. The stories are recounted by a night watchman, a teen driver and a businessman awaiting his first child. These stories are then drawn together at the end, with a twist, as it becomes clear that the Professor is a participant in the stories and not simply a narrator.

## Critical reception

Reviewing the 2010 production, The Guardian called the stories "as substantial and troubling as the fake ectoplasm manifested by a dodgy medium" while, in the same newspaper, a real-life psychic ghost hunter was quoted as saying the play "was refreshing, and made me jump, several times." After revisiting the play in 2019, the newspaper concluded it had become more elegant over the years, but remained "more playful than petrifying." Time Out called the play a "harrowing, 80-minute nightmare thrill."

## Notable productions
### West End and UK productions

The casts and creative teams for the original runs and UK revivals of the play were:
| Character | Liverpool Playhouse / Lyric Hammersmith / Duke of York's | Arts Theatre | Lyric Hammersmith / Ambassadors | UK tour | UK tour |
| Character | 2010 | 2014 | 2019 | 2020 | 2025 |
| Professor Philip Goodman | Andy Nyman | Paul Kemp | Simon Lipkin | Joshua Higgott | Dan Tetsell |
| Tony Matthews | David Cardy | Phillip Whitchurch | Garry Cooper | Paul Hawkyard | David Cardy |
| Simon Rifkind | Ryan Gage | Chris Levens | Preston Nyman | Gus Gordon | Eddie Loodmer-Elliott |
| Mike Priddle | Nicholas Burns | Gary Shelford | Richard Sutton | Richard Sutton | Clive Mantle |

#### Notable replacements

* Professor Philip Goodman - Reece Shearsmith
| Written by | Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman | Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman | Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman | Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman |
| Directed by | Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman | Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman | Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman, Sean Holmes | Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman, Sean Holmes |
| Associate Director | Sean Holmes | | Joe Murphy | Joe Murphy |
| Designed by | Jon Bausor | Jon Bausor | Jon Bausor | Jon Bausor |
| Lighting by | James Farncombe | James Farncombe | James Farncombe | James Farncombe |
| Sound by | Nick Manning | Nick Manning | Nick Manning | Nick Manning |
| Special Effects by | Scott Penrose | Scott Penrose | Scott Penrose | Scott Penrose |
| Fight and movement director | | | Roly Botha | Roly Botha |

### Original Australian production

The cast and creative team for the original Australian tour of the play were:
| Professor Philip Goodman | Stuart Brennan |
| Tony Matthews | Richard Moss |
| Simon Rifkind | Matthew Connell |
| Mike Priddle | Brian Markey |
| Written by | Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman |
| Directed by | Jennifer Sarah Dean & Peter Snee |

## Film adaptation

A film adaptation premiered in 2017, starring Nyman in a reprisal of his role as Professor Philip Goodman, Paul Whitehouse as the night watchman, Alex Lawther as the student, and Martin Freeman as the businessman.