Haunting Julia

Ayckbourn’s ghost story is a pretty standard affair that left me feeling that he had come up with a simple conceit, slapped on some cod psychology and left the real work to the special effects team. But all that said I came away having had a pretty good night out. This I would accredit to the skill of Duncan Preston who can certainly deliver. The same goes for Richard O’Callaghan who gave a great performance as the psychic janitor. Joe McFadden had less to work with in a role that never seems to amount to very much. Ayckbourne’s instinctive northern humour was at its best in the opening scenes and one couldn’t help wishing that he had stuck with the jokes and ditched the ghost. The heart of the play could have been Julia, but in the end we learned so little about her that the rest seemed a pretty pointless excuse to play at the psychic and psychology.

Theatre Royal Brighton, 4 December 2012

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