FringeReview UK 2026
The Haunting of Hill House
Mark Puddle, with Alexander “Sandy” Marshall and Partick Myles Present a Wiltshire Creative Production in Association with Theatr Clwyd.
Genre: Adaptation, American Theater, Drama, Horror, LGBTQ+ Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, Multimedia, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
The Haunting of Hill House is adapted from Shirley Jackson’s classic 1959 novel by Scottish dramatist Stef Smith and directed by Martin Constantine. It plays at Theatre Royal, Brighton through October 24, when it continues touring; first to The Palace Theatre Manchester from October 27-31.
A great night out for horror lovers as we approach Halloween.
Review
“Things look and behave differently in the dark” Certainly this high-tech chiller delivers schlock-sounds from the start. But is it this year’s 2:22, and is that a fair question? After all, The Haunting of Hill House is adapted from Shirley Jackson’s classic 1959 novel by Scottish dramatist Stef Smith and directed by Martin Constantine. It plays at Theatre Royal, Brighton through October 24, when it continues touring; first to The Palace Theatre Manchester from October 27-31.
With the novel acclaimed as nearly perfect by Stephen King, a great 1964 film and subsequent appalling remakes, Stef Smith embarks on her own slant way into a classic; aided by a huge technical team. But again is it a case of Smith being mugged by sonic poltergeists? Smith fruitfully queers the pitch, working with Jackson’s gay precedent. It depends how far can she take it. Smith’s is not the first stage adaptation: she gets the tone of the original characters (with one departure), but this 45-55 game of two halves – delayed by a 25-minte tech issue – is drastically pruned.
A ghost investigator Dr Montague (Jasper Britton, distinguished in classics) and his wife (the excellent Jemma Churchill, pointlessly delayed till Act Two for no other reason than change of dynamics) invite people to come to a house where the builder died 20 years earlier. But he’d lived alone 40 years ever since his wife and child were killed coming to the newly-built pile. A housekeeper – Sian Howard’s comically taciturn Mrs Dudley un-bends memorably in the last third – keeps her promise over many years; but is only there in daylight. One young woman in particular proves sensitive. But who in the house wants her to stay? And does she want it too?
The production centres round Clancy Ryan’s superbly-observed Eleanor. Fragile yet ardent, Eleanor carries guilt for the death of her mother who practically imprisoned her as a nurse. Coming here she seeks freedom, but also somewhere to belong. Could that be yet another prison? Elanor’s slow disintegration seems to her like a homecoming, to others as if she’s alien to herself. She certainly belongs in period, as do most of the cast. Not so Sophie Lenglinger’s sassy, sexy Theodora. Who, in an 1980s orange top (at first), slinks her way round the house’s heir Luke (Robin Morrissey, soured scion, adrift except to flirting); and then flirts with innocent Eleanor.
Jackson made Theodora gay, with Eleanor taking ages to clock on. Here Theodora’s cheerfully bisexual; she and Luke swiftly connect; but each hits on Eleanor and visa versa. “Journeys end in lovers’ meeting” Eleanor quotes to each of them, moving in. Who’s the innocent now? Despite some clinches Smith can’t alter essential dynamics, and at one point – it sits oddly – Theodora rejects the homeless Eleanor’s desire to flat-share. It’d probably cramp Theodora’s style.
The technical prowess goes way beyond even shows like 2:22 to be fair; and should be up for an award. The only problem is scale and relentlessness. And whether it’s appropriate to the slow M. R. James-style dread slithering in the dark. Ti Green’s set deceptively seems traditional: it allows every ghost to blow through its grand arches; and silhouettes peek through bland 1959 costumes. But this is a feint. Johnny Edwards’s sound design shrieks and crashes like Psycho on acid meets Stockhausen. Ghosts are traditionally 12-tone but Harry Blake’s slash-cum-thwacking to a string-section playing on glass assaults you from the first millisecond. Chris Davey’s guignol lighting and Duncan McLean’s stencilled video design on Green’s panelled backdrop – which allows Davey to suggest different rooms – twist the architecture, just as Dr Montague observes. Illusion designer Will Houstoun plays shockers abetted by Davey’s spotlighting, makes two items seem escaped from The Woman in Black (but Hill came first), furniture jump, with walls dissolving.
Britton – whose natural mischief was on sovereign display when playing Marlowe’s Barabas in the RSC’s 2015 Jew of Malta – does his best to glint humour here. Churchill, whose character arrives far earlier in other adaptations as well as the novel – manages to turn superbly on a change of mind at the end. Howard as suggested works outwards from a straitjacket role into someone more moving and nuanced, Morrissey dispatches an ungrateful role: he seems a little underwritten, or edited. Lenglinger’s slinky Theodora doesn’t quite sit with the rest in smith’s rewriting: but who cares? She’s deliciously amoral. And above all Ryan excels and is the beating heart of a production sidelined by house robots, as it were. And this is technically more than a first-rate show. The story’s overwhelmed though and some characters don’t blossom. Still, a great night out for horror lovers as we approach Halloween.
Dramaturg Jackie Crighton, Movement Director Georgina Lamb, Vocal Coach Kay Welch, Associate Director Bobbie Jean Henning, Casting Director Sophie Holland CDG.
General Manager James Quaife, Associate General Manager Joly Black, Production Manager Ian Taylor, CSM Chloe Wison, DSM Verena Prandstaetter, ASM Will Macleod, Ashraf Bakr, Rehearsal ASM Grace Waring, Costume Supervisors Emily Barratt, Photo Credit: Pamela Raith.
