Theatre reviews: Ghost Stories | The Kelton Hill Fair

These two plays both explore the supernatural, but from very different perspectives, writes Joyce McMillan

Ghost Stories, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★

The Kelton Hill Fair, Tron Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★

Do you believe in ghosts? It’s a question you have to be ready to answer, in the opening moments of Jeremy Dyson and Andy Newman’s Ghost Stories; as the central character, ghost-busting academic Professor Goodman, takes to the stage to deliver his lecture on how most supernatural experiences are just tricks of the troubled mind.

When he asks the audience whether they believe in ghosts, more than half raise their hands to say yes; and so begins a pleasingly scary and occasionally thoughtful evening in which three of Professor Goodman’s interviewees tell their ghost stories - played out in front of our half-covered eyes - before the show moves into a more seriously haunting and questioning final sequence.

Eddie Loodmer-Elliott in Ghost Stories | Hugo Glendinning

In truth, Ghost Stories has none of the terrifying, stomach-lurching horror of truly great ghost stories like The Woman In Black, the show that first inspired Dyson and Newman back in 2009; its style is more discursive, and less certain that some ultimate horror exists, beneath the surface of “normal life”.

The 90 minute show is slickly presented, though, by co-directors Dyson, Newman, and Sean Holmes; it’s also inventively designed by John Bausor, with fresh sets for each new story looming improbably out of the darkness. And the stories attract a series of compelling performances from David Cardy, Eddie Loodmer-Elliott, and Clive Mantle; with Dan Tetsell’s Goodman appearing as the calm at the eye of the storm, until the buried forces of darkness in his own life finally begin to make themselves felt.

Ava Hickey as Flora in The Kelton Hill Fair | Contributed

Wonder Fools’s new show The Kelton Hill Fair - created with five young creative collaborators from Dumfries and Galloway - is also a ghost story; but here, the metaphorical purpose of the play’s supernatural elements is clear, and full of a youthful urgency that’s both theatrically thrilling and emotionally compelling.

The story revolves around the figure of young heroine Flo, brilliantly played by recent RCS graduate Ava Hickey. Flo is a local teenager brought up in care, and now facing a crisis after she punched one of her male teachers in the face, for reasons which become more obvious as the story unfolds. So when a mysterious singing traveller appears, and tells her to run while she can, she races off into a strange adventure, in which a new friend called Lizzie leads her towards Kelton Hill, scene for centuries of a legendary annual Travellers’ fair.

There, Flo encounters an otherworldly version of the fair, orchestrated by legendary Traveller King Billy Marshall, in which restless spirits linger, until the last humans to recall them finally die. She meets a predatory Robert Burns; a hopelessly self-deceiving William Hare, of Burke and Hare fame; and early Scottish feminist Lady Florence Dixie, whose claims to feminist solidarity are undermined by her hopeless snobbery.

The point about Flo, though, is that despite her troubled childhood, she is a true heroine, with a creative storytelling life of her own; and she not only survives her encounter with all these predatory creatures, but seizes her chance to return to the real world with her resolve to tell the truth, and confront her oppressors, stronger than ever.

The writing, by Jack Nurse and Robbie Gordon, is breathlessly sharp, witty and telling throughout. The music and songs by VanIves are powerful and haunting, and the supporting performances by Julie Wilson Nimmo, Martin Donaghy, Laura Lovemore and Michael Dylan full of humour and flair. And Sam Stopford, stepping up at short notice to play Billy Marshal, delivers a performance full of a sobering sadness; as he reflects on a deal with Death that condemned him to live forever, among people too cowardly to face either the reality of the lives they have lived, or the fact of death itself.

Ghost Stories is at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, until 29 March; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 2-5 April; and the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 8-12 April. Kelton Hill Fair is at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until 29 March.