'Canterville Ghost' review or 'Wildean wit and wizardry'

Canterville Ghost, from Oscar Wilde
Unicorn Theatre, 20th November 2019
Written for The Guardian 

There’s a little bit for everyone in this eclectic festive show, although perhaps not quite enough of one particular element to really capture the audience. The source material is an Oscar Wilde short story, but there are also snatches of panto, gothic horror, wry cultural commentary and quirky comedy. It’s a smorgasbord of theatrical treats: tasty and varied if not entirely satisfying.

Wilde’s original ghost story remains intact with a few family-friendly tweaks. When the Otis family move from the US to England, they wind up buying a creaky haunted house, abandoned by everyone except an exceedingly dour Scottish housekeeper. But our enterprising emigrants are made of stern stuff and it isn’t long before the family are up to all sorts of tricks, and the ghost himself is fleeing in terror.

It’s a fairly straightforward plot, but Anthony Weigh’s adaption feels a little laboured. The action jumps all over the place, the wordplay isn’t quite playful enough and the magical interludes, which director Justin Audibert gamely interweaves between the main scenes, disappoint. The special effects are part hammy, part scary and end up being just shy of funny or frightening. Rosie Elnile’s set is also a bit confused; restrained and suggestive one minute, extravagantly theatrical – all flashing lights and claps of thunder – the next.

Despite these wobbles, there’s just enough Wes Andersonesque whimsy to keep things interesting. Beth Cordingly and Nana Amoo-Gottfried are pleasingly bonkers as the unshockable mum and dad, Safiyya Ingar charms as sensitive daughter Virginia, and Paul McEwan, as camp ghost Sir Simon Canterville, strops sulkily about the stage as if acting was going out of fashion.