Theatre Royal, Nottingham – until Saturday 25th April 2026
Reviewed by Chris Jarvis
3.33***
2:22 A Ghost Story was written by award-winning writer Danny Robins, creator of Uncanny – the hit BBC Radio 4 podcast which explores real life paranormal and supernatural phenomena. Tonight I was looking forward to testing my own beliefs in such happenings.
Directed by Matthew Dunster and following seven seasons in the West End, a record-breaking tour of the UK and Ireland and thirty productions around the world, my expectations were high for the “adrenaline filled night” of fear and unexplained occurrences that was promised!
As soon as you enter the theatre you are immediately drawn into Anna Fleischle’s set – a partly renovated room in an old house with an original stained-glass door above which a digital clock with large fluorescent red digits attracts your attention. The rest of the room is a modern kitchen/living area with huge patio doors onto the garden.
The play starts quietly with Jenny (Shorvne Marks) finishing off some decorating in the early hours of the morning while her husband Sam (James Bye) is away on business in Sark and her baby daughter sleeping upstairs, monitored by the baby monitor on the table. As Jenny goes to bed for the night and the clock clicks over to 2:22 we hear unexplained noises through the baby monitor, tension builds and the quiet is replaced by the most piercing shriek and total blackness with a vivid fluorescent red strip light surrounding the stage and the audience ‘jumping out of their skin’.
The shriek certainly made me jump and set my teeth on edge, but was I frightened? When this ear-piercing shriek and blackness was used between each act, it lost something for me.
A dinner party hosted by Jenny and Sam on his return from Sark made up most of the remainder of the play and the second act opened with Jenny and their guests Lauren (Natalie Casey) – an American psychotherapist and Ben her partner (Grant Kilburn) – a builder who’d grown up in that area of London. We could hear Sam upstairs via the baby monitor reading a bedtime story to his daughter having arrived home late and unannounced as he’d lost his phone, while Jenny voiced her concerns that the house they were renovating was haunted.
While Sam was in Sark, she’d heard unexplained footsteps in the baby’s bedroom and a man crying, but when Sam joined them for dinner it became obvious that the four characters had different views on whether ghosts exist. Tempers frayed fueled by numerous bottles of wine mostly consumed by Lauren, but tensions built between Sam and Jenny, Lauren and Sam and Sam and Ben – Sam being a common factor despite him not drinking!
Throughout the repeated arguments between the believers and Sam the sceptic time marched on, as the digital clock reminded us. However, there were many hours to go until 2.22 – the time that Jenny said the events occurred. The four agreed to stay together until then and the audience listened to the continued disagreements, revelations from the past, humour and some great one-liners, even a séance suggested by Ben who claimed to have inherited spiritual inclinations from his mother.
I was avidly anticipating the end as I knew there had to be something more to this record-breaking acclaimed play than I’d been watching!
When it came, I was surprised – an ending I hadn’t expected. Despite the great acting, particularly Shvorne, and the clever plot, I think I missed something on the night! Since seeing the final twist, I’ve enjoyed thinking about the whole play and discussing with friends who saw it on the same night and comparing the clues that escaped us during the performance but revealed themselves later.
I think that maybe I should see it again, knowing the ending?