Ghost Stories at a glance

Show
Ghost Stories
Status
Closed at the Peacock Theatre on 8 November 2025
2025 London venue
Peacock Theatre, Portugal Street, London WC2A 2HT
2025 London run
30 September – 8 November 2025 (6 weeks)
2025 UK tour
January – September 2025 (27 venues)
World premiere
Liverpool Playhouse / Lyric Hammersmith, 4 February 2010
Previous West End runs
Duke of York's (2010–11), Arts Theatre (2014), Ambassadors (2019)
Genre
Play (horror / supernatural thriller)
Running time
90 minutes, no interval
Age guidance
Unsuitable for anyone under 15 (extreme shock and tension)
Writers / directors
Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, with Sean Holmes
Awards
Olivier Award nomination
2025 Peacock cast
Jonathan Guy Lewis, David Cardy, Clive Mantle, Preston Nyman, Lloyd McDonagh
Producer
Simon Friend Entertainment
Film adaptation
Released 2017, directed by Dyson and Nyman, starring Martin Freeman, Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther

Looking back: Ghost Stories at the Peacock Theatre

4.4
★★★★☆

LTH Retrospective Rating

Retrospective by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 13 May 2026.

The Verdict

Ghost Stories arrived at the Peacock Theatre in autumn 2025 for its fourth West End engagement since 2010, and the strange thing about it — fifteen years on — was how little had aged. Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman's 90-minute one-act remains a piece of unusually precise theatrical engineering: a lecture-frame anchored by an arch-sceptic Professor of Parapsychology, three nested ghost stories each performed by a different actor, and a final twenty-minute act that ties the whole structure together in a way that has been kept under wraps by audiences, critics and the producers for the entire decade and a half since the original 2010 Liverpool Playhouse premiere.

The 2025 Peacock cast — Jonathan Guy Lewis as Goodman, David Cardy as Tony Matthews, Clive Mantle as Mike Priddle, Preston Nyman as Simon Rifkind, Lloyd McDonagh as The Others — kept faith with what the original production established. The scares, designed by Scott Penrose and built on Jon Bausor's set, are still the same scares; they still work. There is nothing else in current London theatre quite like sitting in the dark for ninety uninterrupted minutes with no escape from a play that has been engineered to put the audience on edge from the first sound cue.

What Makes It Special

  • Genuine theatrical engineering. Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson built Ghost Stories like a precision instrument. The pacing, the staging, the placement of every jump scare — none of it is incidental. After fifteen years and four West End runs, the production still delivers the scares the same way.
  • The lecture frame. Professor Philip Goodman opening the show with a parapsychology lecture, complete with case-file slides, gives the play an unusually formal structure for a horror piece. The seriousness of the framing is part of what makes the supernatural beats land — the play earns its scares rather than merely shocking the audience.
  • The 90-minute, no-interval discipline. No break. No release. Once the lights go down the audience is locked in for the duration. Few productions in commercial London theatre commit to this format — it is one of the most important reasons Ghost Stories works.
  • The final act. The producers, every critic to write about the play since 2010, and the show's worldwide audience have collectively kept the final twenty minutes' twist out of print and online discussion for fifteen years. The integrity of that silence is itself part of the production's identity.
  • The Dyson/Nyman pedigree. Jeremy Dyson (League of Gentlemen) and Andy Nyman (Hangmen, Fiddler on the Roof, Hello, Dolly!) are serious theatre makers approaching a genre — horror — that is rarely served well on stage. Their joint craft is the reason Ghost Stories has had four West End runs, a film adaptation, and productions in nine countries.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in Ghost Stories?

Professor Philip Goodman is a Professor of Parapsychology and a long-standing arch-sceptic. His public life is devoted to debunking the paranormal — exposing fraudulent mediums, dismantling apparent hauntings, attacking what he sees as the dangerous ground supernatural belief gives to delusion and grief. The play opens with Goodman addressing the audience directly as if delivering one of his university lectures.

The three case files

Goodman walks the audience through three case files he has been unable to explain, each dramatised in turn as the lights shift on Jon Bausor's set.

Case one. Tony Matthews, a night watchman, is alone in a disused converted asylum on a routine overnight shift. The lights start to behave strangely. He hears a child. The play's first sustained sequence of stage-managed dread.

Case two. Simon Rifkind, a teenage boy, has been driving alone through woodland when he hits something. Or someone. The car will not start. He is convinced he is being watched.

Case three. Mike Priddle, a businessman, is at home awaiting the imminent birth of his first child when a presence begins to make itself known in the nursery.

The final act

Goodman returns to the lectern. The three case files appear to be over. They are not. The play's final twenty minutes — kept deliberately unspoiled by reviewers, audiences and producers since 2010 — recontextualise everything the audience has watched in a way that the production has insisted, successfully for fifteen years, must remain secret. It is the reason the show carries an age guidance of 15+, the reason the production specifies "moments of extreme shock and tension", and the reason audience members leave the theatre still talking about it days later.