The woman in the back

After escaping from work early yesterday evening, Ka's Mum and Dad, Dougie and Grace, took us out. We were off into town and after a quick stop to buy some wine gums and jelly babies, were diving through the Glasgow traffic to the Theatre Royal to see the stage production of 'The Woman in Black'. A dark, chilling tale of a solicitor who gets inadvertantly cursed by an evil spirit, spawned from a client's family history.
'The Woman in Black' is an adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 novel and has already been playing in London's West End for many years and is now on a Nation wide tour. An entertaining production with only three actors, two chairs, a door, a large wicker basket and an invisible dog which together served as the main players on stage to illustrate the ghostly tale. The actors were great in their roles and the audience watched with a quiet unease as the story unfolded with a few gentle scares along the way with appearances from the mysterious screaming woman in black.
As the story began, the elder of the main players walked out on to the stage and began reading quietly from a script. The audience of the theatre quietened down to a complete stillness as we all struggled to hear what was being murmured. As we strained to hear the words in the theatre's silence the audience began to wonder if we were actually supposed to be hearing the man's words. Ka took her bag of wine gums out from her pocket and very quietly started peeling the bag's glued top apart. Slowly, slowly, she prized the plastic bag open taking care to make as little noise as possible in the silence. The creaks of the old theatre seats and the odd, inescapable cough were the loudest noises in the large room as the man's words mumbled over us. Suddenly a loud voice yelled from the the back of the theatre shattering the concentrated silence into which the stage actor's mumbles had flowed. Many people jumped at the sudden loud shout from the rear of the stalls. Some screamed. One woman in particular, seated further behind us, screamed such a great, tremoring, 'oh my gawd!' that her voice broke out and above all the other noises of shock. Her screech seemed to echo louder than the actors, as the younger of the two actors strode from the back of the stalls to join his companion up on the stage. He talked as he walked but I think everyone was still suffering the aftereffects of the initial surprise to concentrate on his lines. I certainly could not stop myself from laughing for the first five minutes of the story, subtley trying to pinpoint from where the terrible screech had come from in the audience, perhaps waiting to catch a glimpse of a rather embarrassed lady slinking off to the loo. No one moved from their seat though and the woman remained anonymous . Her scream was so loud the woman must have, at the very least, spilt her jelly babies all over the place.