● THE HORROR-MEETS-MYSTERY genre is a lucrative staple of the streaming services and film, while proving much harder for the theatre to nail. Special effects and CGI that wow on the small screen can look clunky on the big stage. Even the hardiest Lloyd-Webber perennial, The Phantom of the Opera, deploys resilient nineteenth-century tropes of flickering candlelight and masks to create its ghostly atmosphere. The Woman in Black, embarking on another national tour this spring, has had a similar durability as, in its own estimation, “the most terrifying theatrical experience in the world”.
