The stage show that really will make you leap out of your seat!
The play is 2:22 A Ghost Story and it’s at the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton from October 17-21; at the Theatre Royal Brighton from October 24-28; and at Chichester Festival Theatre from February 6-10.
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FunTranscript
00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt,
00:05 Greenpants editor at Sussex Newspapers, and it's lovely to speak to Nathaniel Curtis
00:09 from the cast of 222, A Ghost Story. Lovely to speak to you, despite the fact
00:13 that your sole intention is to scare the pants off us, isn't it?
00:16 This is what I thought I was ready for.
00:21 No, I love the audience's reactions, so as much as I
00:28 love their screaming, I also love their laughter.
00:31 And you've made us jump in this. Set the scene then, well it's a dinner party, isn't it?
00:37 So the play is about a young mum called Jenny, played beautifully by
00:43 Louisa Litton in our cast, and Jenny's husband Sam, played by me,
00:50 has gone away on a business trip, and then whilst he's been away, Jenny starts
00:54 hearing footsteps in her daughter's room. Their
00:57 two-year-old daughter, even though, sorry, their one-year-old daughter, excuse me,
01:00 even though the house is just her and Phoebe. And so when Sam returns from
01:04 this trip, they invite Sam's friend Lauren and her
01:07 new boyfriend Ben over for dinner, and Jenny reveals during this dinner
01:13 party that she hears a ghost in the house.
01:16 Wow, and you're saying you get a great scream from the audience very early in
01:20 the proceedings, don't you? We do. I won't tell you when, but we do
01:24 get one very early. And it's lovely because then we know
01:28 that they're with us, you know, and we can tell the story quite
01:32 comfortably knowing that we are listening to audiences and they
01:35 are listening to us as well. Yeah, and you're very conscious of the
01:38 audience reaction, and you're saying that the audience effectively is the fifth
01:41 character. They really are. I think in
01:44 most plays though, the audience is an extra character because we are
01:49 working with them. We are entertaining them, we are
01:54 thrilling them, we are educating them, or whatever the purpose of the play is.
01:57 And to have, especially a play like this where the reactions are so
02:03 natural, we have people screaming, people laughing, people
02:07 just reacting to the gasps, the
02:12 moments where they really feel something. They're not afraid to be able to
02:17 express that. It's not a very straight-based reserves
02:21 play. It's fun, it's scary, it's funny, it's a little bit
02:26 sexy, it's intelligent. It's got a bit of
02:30 everything, and it's really nice to have the audiences then
02:33 on our side. But you, sir, were saying that you're very happy to scare people, but
02:38 you're not so keen on being scared yourself.
02:40 Absolutely not. I hate it. With a big passion, I hate.
02:45 I appreciate horror for what it is. I just want to be part of it, because
02:51 I don't like the idea of being scared, and I just don't understand
02:55 why people do at all. Like, I've read a couple of Stephen
03:00 King's, I've read some classics. You've got your Dracula,
03:03 your Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein's, and then, oh, sorry, that's the tannoy.
03:08 They're in the middle of a cover run at the moment with our beautiful
03:11 understudies Grant and Natalie. But yeah, so I don't like it.
03:16 But you're happy to dish it out, clearly. Yeah, absolutely. The director, just before
03:21 we went on for our very first preview, she
03:23 very quietly said to me, there's something so amazing about,
03:28 gratifying about the audience screaming. And I just thought,
03:32 okay, that's slightly scary to hear, but thank you very much. And from that first
03:36 scream, I was like, oh, that's a fun sensation. And so,
03:41 yeah, we like it. That's the ultimate power for an actor, then, isn't it?
03:45 It really, really is. Of course, yeah, and it's not as sadistic as I'm
03:51 making out, but it is, it's fun for us, because then we know that
03:56 we've, I mean, it's not just us, you know, it's the beautiful writing and the
04:00 great direction. This production is delivering what it is
04:04 promising. Yeah, yeah, and that's absolutely what we
04:08 want as an audience. We want to be involved.
04:12 Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's what we want as performers as well, to have people on our side.
04:17 Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward very much indeed to being scared stiff by you.
04:21 Thank you very much indeed. Thank you very, very much. Thank you.