It Walks Around The House At Night at Southwark Playhouse

I do not get to Southwark Playhouse as often as I whould but that is London's fault for having so many theatres. This production sounded interesting enough to get me back there and the clincher was the production company ThickSkin, who I first encountered with much delight in 2012.

Being over a decade later meant that I now qualified for the Old Gits discount and my seat in the front row was a modest £22.5, about the price of three pints.

Though not my core passion, I have seen several ghost plays over the years, mostly touring shows like 2:22 and The Woman in Black at Richmond Theatre. This was nothing like those. It was far far better.

The story was unexpected and the storytelling exceptional. It was narrated in the first person with George Naylor telling us the story of jobbing actor Joe who took on an unusual commission to walk around a house at night. Iy was a more-or-less solo show and George Naylor led us skilfully through a turbulent experience of lust, fear, laughter and friendship.

There was a lot going on around the main story including a reference to Simon Armitage's poem Those Bastards in their Mansions and an different use of the term "spell checker". Those are just two small examples of the many rich nuggets in Tim Foley's script.

The set and direction were exemplary too with lots of darkness, appropriate loud noises, some projection on the back of the stage and a wire allowing George Naylor to adopt otherwise impossible poses.As with the script, there was a lot going on and it was all good.

It Walks Around The House At Night was exceptional theatre.