Like the Great White Way, the West End of London is brimming with large-scale theatre productions. Recently, shows like Guys & Dolls, Spamalot and We Will Rock You have been popular there, even as more intimate pieces like Frost/Nixon have made a smaller but significant splash. But one show that is a West End mainstay, and which currently sits in the shadow of the impending Lord of the Rings production across the street, is The Woman in Black, a chilling Victorian ghost story that has been running at The Fortune Theatre for 18 years. Now part of a high school curriculum that ensures regular attendance, along with repeat adult visitors, it continues to thrive around much bigger productions. It is also a relatively cheap show to run, even with smaller attendance; there are three people in the cast and six on the crew. When The Woman in Black was originally presented at the Theatre-By-the-Sea in Scarborough in 1987, it was intended to be a Christmas time production with a possible six to eight week run. But intense interest in the show inspired the producers to move it to the prestigious West End of London by February 1989.
“When they told us that, I thought it would do a healthy six months and that would be it,” recalls lighting designer Kevin Sleep. “Instead of waiting for a theatre to turn up that would be the right size, they moved it to the West End quite quickly so people wouldn’t forget about it. I think it was moved to the Strand Theatre first, then it went to the Playhouse, and finally; after about a year, it moved to the Fortune, where it is now.”
The Woman in Black is a simple tale that builds from a comedic tone into a nail-biting supernatural story when an elderly man hires a young actor to help him present a two-man show about a horrific experience he had in a haunted house when he was a young solicitor. What starts as an awkward rehearsal process with a bare minimum of props — a wicker basket is used in place of a horse-drawn carriage, but background audio enhances the scene — develops into a suspenseful, unnerving theatre piece between the two men who are accompanied by a sinister woman in black quietly prowling the stage at times. Most of the terror, though, comes mainly from the suggestions created by the actors’ words, along with moody lighting and sinister sound effects. Like any great horror story, it leaves a lot to the imagination.
When he designed The Woman in Black, Sleep was six years into a career that started with trade shows and conferences in 1981 and soon graduated to the Edinburgh Festival. Then, after touring with a Japanese dance group around Europe, followed by lighting a number of British theatre shows, he landed his first West End gig in 1986. By 1991, he became the head of lighting at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and he remained there for a decade, until he was persuaded to take the same position five years ago at the English National Opera where he currently works.
Sleep feels that the intimate size of the Fortune — probably with a capacity of no more than a few hundred theatergoers — is perfect for the three-person Woman in Black production, but its technological limitations presented some lighting problems, specifically in terms of dimmers. “When I first did the show, I used about 120 or 125 at the most,” explains Sleep. “It’s not a lot compared to many other shows, but when we went to the Fortune, they had 60, and the producers were prepared to pay for another six. You might as well laugh. It was deeply frustrating, and so I had to make some compromises. Some of the subtlety that was in there went out because you had to light slightly bigger areas onstage than originally planned.”
After the production started touring as its original run continued, the then-West End cast attended an opening in Bristol. They were surprised at how much better it looked there and interrogated the director about it. “We explained that on tour it was back to 120 or 130 circuits,” states Sleep. “Again, nothing huge, but certainly twice what the Fortune Theatre had.”
After 17 years, during which Sleep would occasionally pop in to check on the show, that problem was rectified last December, when a gradual overhaul of the lighting rig, which was tricky given the permanent set, allowed him to expand the number of dimmers from 66 to 96 over three separate weekends. The console was upgraded to a Strand 520 (he vaguely recollects the former console being either a Strand Galaxy or Gemini), and new scrollers were introduced to add a bit more color to the show.
With this lighting upgrade, Sleep was able to make some welcome changes. Whereas before the feel of lit areas could be changed by altering the intensity of the lights, now more color can be used to brighten certain areas “but still give the feel of close intimacy where needed or for damp, dark places, because we color around it to get that feel.”
There are no movers in the lighting setup. The rig is made up of ETC Source Four Profiles and Selecon Fresnels, PAR cans and floods. Sleep estimates that there are about 40 Profiles and 60 to 70 Fresnels and PAR cans, along with a half-dozen floods. As far as gels, they are all Lee and Rosco — 201, 202, 204, 205, plus ambers and golds in the Lee 700 range, along with “a lot of Rosco blues.” He likes the “nice, rich blues” of the Roscos, which work well for a show whose interior and exterior scenes are predominately set at night.
The only effect that is used is fog. There are two smoke machines located beneath the front of the stage, billowing up from stairs leading down to the pit. And there are two gobos used for very dramatic effects — one of a very large cross projected onto the background curtain for a church scene, and one a projection of the house for a couple of exterior scenes. But the most impressive effect is the revelation that the curtain is a giant scrim behind which a spooky nursery is set, and beyond that lies a sinister staircase and foyer area with large gauze windows cut out of cloth to highlight the massive size of the house.
“One of the nice things about The Woman in Black is that it’s a traditional bit of theatre where every element of theatre — whether it be lighting, sound, staging or acting — all play a part,” declares Sleep. “You don’t get that that often in such a way that everything’s important. If you have an interior scene in some plays, if it all went wrong and you had a warm light instead of a cold light, it possibly would not make a bit of a difference. But here, the whole impression is to let your mind start wondering. What would happen if you were in that situation? What would you do if you saw someone in the churchyard? What would happen if you were locked in a ghostly house on the moors? What if? That’s the real clever bit about the whole ghost story. It lets you put yourself in the position of the actors.”
The younger man in the show even makes technical requests to unseen lighting and sound men. It helps create the illusion that we are sitting in on a rehearsal, even as the performers turn it into a compelling narrative, and the creative team behind the show makes sure that the audience falls into that mode of thinking. “What is nice is that all the crew working on the show appreciate how important it is to get everything right and how it’s important that it all works together,” says Sleep.
They succeeded brilliantly. Scaring people silly on film is not always an easy thing to do, and doing it onstage is even more impressive. And the Woman in Black herself is frightening without uttering a single word.
