What happens in The Woman in Black?
An elderly solicitor, Arthur Kipps, has hired a Victorian theatre to recount a true story from his past — a haunting he experienced as a young man that has shadowed his life ever since. Believing himself an inadequate storyteller, he has also hired a young Actor to help him perform the events for an audience of his family and friends. The play begins as the Actor coaches Kipps through his account, gradually persuading him to dramatise rather than narrate.
The setting and the assignment
Young Arthur Kipps — the solicitor played by the Actor — is sent from London to a remote town on the East coast of England. His task: to attend the funeral of his firm's elderly client, Mrs Alice Drablow, and then to retrieve and review her papers. Mrs Drablow lived alone at Eel Marsh House, a property accessible only by a causeway that floods at high tide. The town's locals will not speak about her, the local landowner Sam Daily seems reluctant to help, and at the funeral itself Kipps sees, briefly, a young woman in black with a wasted face.
Eel Marsh House
Kipps takes a pony and trap across the causeway and sets to work at Eel Marsh House — sleeping there, sorting papers by candlelight. By turns he hears noises in the marsh, sees the woman in black again, and begins to piece together a family tragedy involving a young child, an aunt, and a death by drowning. The framing device — that we are in a theatrical rehearsal — periodically interrupts. The audience is told that "sound effects" will be added, then the sound effects begin to feel disturbingly present.
The reveal
By long-standing audience convention, the play's final beats are not described in writing. The show has cultivated, like The Mousetrap, a tradition of audiences being asked not to share the ending. The reveal involves the framing device collapsing — the line between the story Kipps is dramatising and the reality of the auditorium itself dissolves with calculated theatrical force. Multiple audience members in 33 years of performances have reported leaving the theatre genuinely shaken.
How The Woman in Black became one of the longest-running plays in West End history
Susan Hill's 1983 novel
Susan Hill published The Woman in Black as a deliberate exercise in the Victorian ghost story tradition — short, atmospheric, structured around place and silence rather than gore. It became one of the most-read English ghost stories of the late twentieth century and has been continuously in print since publication. The novel itself runs to about 160 pages.
The 1987 Scarborough premiere
The stage adaptation began as a Christmas commission. The Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where playwright Alan Ayckbourn was Artistic Director, needed a small-cast Christmas show for its bar space. Stephen Mallatratt — already an experienced screenwriter (Coronation Street, Stay Lucky) and dramaturg — adapted Hill's novel into a two-actor play that could be staged with almost no resources. Robin Herford directed the premiere, which ran in the theatre bar over Christmas 1987.
The Lyric Hammersmith and the Fortune transfer
The Scarborough production was brought to the Lyric Hammersmith Studio in January 1989 — most critics responded warmly, though Mark Steyn at The Independent famously regretted "the production's inability to incorporate a live dog." From the Lyric the production transferred to the Strand Theatre (now the Novello) in March 1989, then to the Playhouse in April, and finally to the Fortune Theatre on 7 June 1989 — where it remained for 33 years.
The 33-year Fortune Theatre run
Over 13,000 performances. Over seven million audience members. Generations of school groups. A film adaptation in 2012 starring Daniel Radcliffe (no relation to the Mallatratt stage version). The COVID-19 pandemic forced a 14-month closure between March 2020 and May 2021. The producers announced the closure in late 2022, with the final performance taking place on 4 March 2023.
The 2025-26 UK tour
PW Productions confirmed the 22-venue UK tour in March 2025. The tour opened at Storyhouse, Chester, on 24 September 2025, followed by a three-week residency at Alexandra Palace in October. The London Richmond Theatre date played in late November 2025. The 2026 tour leg covers 18 further venues including Darlington, York, Glasgow, Birmingham, Chelmsford, Oxford, Poole, Liverpool, Nottingham, Bradford, Peterborough, Malvern, Southampton and Guildford. John Mackay (The Doctor, Witness for the Prosecution) plays Arthur Kipps; Daniel Burke (The Girl on the Train, Troilus and Cressida — RSC) plays the Actor.
