![](https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/IMG_0636.jpeg)
Show: 2:22 A Ghost Story
Society: New Victoria Theatre (professional productions)
Venue: New Victoria Theatre
Credits: By Danny Robbins
Type: Sardines
Author: Paul Johnson
Performance Date: 09/04/2024
2:22 A Ghost Story
Paul Johnson | 10 Apr 2024 09:41am
Photo : Johan Persson
Woking’s ATG venue, The New Victoria Theatre, is playing spooky tales this week. In fact, the last time this happened also featured George Rainsford, nine months ago, alongside Katy McGlyn and Clive Mantle, except Wish You Were Dead by Peter James also saw suits of armour and plenty of creaky floorboards that you would expect from an old French chateau. 2:22 A Ghost Story is deliberately written for the younger audience (with an Alexa!) and Rainsford, this time, stars as one half of a newly married couple who have also got a young child of just weeks old, have bought a house and are in the process of modernising it (not that Peter James isn’t for younger audiences too, The House on Haunted Hill starring Joe McFadden and Rita Simons also featured an Alexa and was modern). But these mysterious ‘younger’ audience members (keep digging) were evident at press night yesterday evening and consisted of mainly females with an age-range from teenagers up to thirty or forty-somethings.
that may be all I can say for fear of giving away spoilers. At the end, the audience is asked to: “Shhh… Keep it to yourselves”. Suffice to say Rainsford, or rather, Sam, is very sceptical towards ‘anything’ supernatural, saying “There’ll be an explanation behind it,” whenever he is confronted with another spooky tale. That probably especially extends to his ex, Lauren’s (Vera Chok) new boyfriend, Ben, thoughtfully played by Strictly and The Wanted’s Jay McGuiness. Ben rubs the new father up the wrong way to put it mildly.
This is a potential problem because Sam’s young wife (and new mother), Jenny (Fiona Wade), DOES believe.. or is at the very least extremely impressionable. Anyway, Lauren and Ben have come to Sam and Jenny’s new house for a dinner party and to have a nose around, but Jenny soon complains of things happening every night at 2:22am and that the two young guests need to stay until past 2:22am so Jenny can prove to her husband once and for all that there is something spooky going on after all. Trouble is Sam’s level of scepticism is so high that it threatens their marriage.
Not surprisingly spooky tales are told throughout the evening and I loved the audience’s first reaction to the end of each scene when each time the air is filled with screams and the stage lights all turn red. By the end the audience probably sees it as a touch annoying but the first time the gimmick was used was to die for, and I heard the audience mumbling, laughing and tittering for several minutes.
And I cannot tell you anymore….