BLOG-A-WEEN: WOMEN IN BLACK.
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Earthlings, Alternatives and Trollers. Put down that mouse and lend
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Since its
Blog-A-Ween Today's blog is on the west end play the woman in Black,
and the book of the same name by Susan Hill.
THE PLAY
Act I
The
play opens in an empty Victorian
theatre,
where an old Arthur Kipps is reading aloud from a manuscript of his
story. A young actor whom he hired to help dramatise the story,
enters and criticises him for his poor delivery. After an argument,
they agree to perform the story, with the Actor playing a younger
Kipps, and Kipps himself playing all the other characters and
narrating the play. When they run through the play, however, things
begin to go terribly wrong.
Young
Kipps learns of the death of the elderly and reclusive widow Mrs
Drablow. He travels to Crythin Gifford to sort through her private
papers. On the train, he meets a local landowner,
Mr Samuel Daily, who tells him a little about Mrs Drablow. Upon their
arrival at Crythin, Mr Daily drops off Arthur at the local inn
where
he is to stay the night.
The
next morning, young Arthur meets with a local man enlisted to help
him, Mr Horatio Jerome. They go to Mrs Drablow's funeral together,
where Arthur first sees the Woman in Black. At first feeling sorry
for the young woman, who was apparently suffering from some dreadful
wasting disease, he asks Mr Jerome who she is. Mr Jerome is visibly
terrified and hurries Arthur away from the church, insisting that
there was no woman.
After
their return to the inn, Mr Jerome recovers somewhat, and says that a
local man will arrive presently to escort Arthur to Mrs Drablow's
house.
The
local man, a villager named Keckwick, arrives a few moments later. To
Arthur's delight, Keckwick drives Arthur in an old-fashioned pony
and trap out
to the house. Arthur spends the day sorting through Mrs Drablow's
papers, and is amazed to find out how many there are. He also finds
an old cemetery outside the house, where he again encounters the
Woman in Black. Later that day, a thick
fog settles
on the marsh, cutting Arthur off from the mainland.
He tries to return across the causeway on foot in the fog, but
quickly becomes lost and is forced to retrace his steps to Eel Marsh
House. Before he gets there, he hears the sound of a pony and trap on
the causeway. Assuming that it is Keckwick returning, he turns back
into the fog. It soon becomes apparent that the pony and trap are in
trouble, and he hears it drive off the causeway onto the marsh.
Arthur listens helplessly as the pony and trap get stuck in the mire
and its occupants, including a young child, are drowned. Arthur
returns to the house in a state of shock. Whilst he is exploring the
house, he discovers a locked door. Due to his emotional state, he
becomes distressed when he is unable to open it. He is surprised when
Keckwick returns a few hours later.
Act
I ends with a monologue
from
young Arthur in which he explains that he is sure, although he does
not know how, that the sounds he heard were from neither Keckwick nor
any living thing, but from things that are dead.
Act II
Arthur
seeks the help of Mr Jerome, either to accompany him back to Eel
Marsh House or to send him someone else to help. Mr Jerome becomes
profoundly terrified, and insists that nobody in the village would
willingly accompany him to the house. Arthur later meets Sam Daily
and tells him of his experiences. Sam is concerned and invites Arthur
to his house, where he gives Arthur his dog, Spider, as a companion.
(The dog, though real within the plot, is imaginary and is not
portrayed by either actor.)
Returning
to Eel Marsh House, Arthur finds that the locked room is a child's
nursery,
abandoned but in perfect condition. Later that night, he hears a
knocking sound in the nursery. He and Spider investigate. The nursery
has been ransacked, and in one of the play's most iconic scenes,
Arthur sees an empty rocking chair rocking back and forth as if
somebody had just left it. Arthur fearfully returns to his bedroom.
The
next day Arthur finds correspondence from almost sixty years ago,
between Mrs Drablow and a mysterious woman who is apparently her
sister. The woman, Jennet Humfrye, unmarried and with child, was sent
away by her family. A son was born to her in Scotland,
and her family immediately pressured her to give him up for adoption.
Despite her strong resistance, Jennet ultimately relented and gave
the child to Mrs Drablow and her husband.
Unable
to bear being parted from her son, Jennet returned to Crythin Gifford
after a time and stayed with her sister. She was allowed to see her
son provided that she never reveal her true relationship to him. The
child became attached to Jennet. She planned to run away with him,
but before she could manage it, a tragic event occurred.
The
child, his nursemaid,
and his dog went out onto the marsh one day in a pony and trap driven
by Keckwick's father. A fog suddenly descended upon the marsh and
they became lost. Riding blindly, they became stuck in the quicksand,
and all were drowned. Jennet, driven mad by grief, contracted a
terrible wasting disease and died several years later. Immediately
after her death, she returned as the Woman in Black.
Arthur
suddenly becomes subject to a series of terrifying events in Eel
Marsh House, and eventually collapses on the marsh when trying to
rescue Spider. He is found and taken back to Crythin by Sam Daily,
who assures him that Spider is all right. He tells Arthur the story
of the Woman, and explains that many of the local people he has met
(Jerome, Keckwick and Daily himself) have all lost a child after
seeing her.
Kipps
returns to London and marries his fiancée, Stella. At a country
fair, Stella and their infant son Joseph go for a ride on a pony and
trap. Arthur sees the Woman in Black. Joseph is thrown from the trap,
and hits a tree, killing him instantly. Stella then dies 10 months
later due to injuries sustained in the accident. (This scene is
depicted through recorded sound and narration.)
Having
come to the end of their rehearsal, Kipps and the Actor sit down to
rest. Kipps wonders if performing the play for his family will
exorcise
the
Woman in Black.
A
twist is added at the end of the play; the Actor asks Kipps about the
actress playing the Woman in Black. Mirroring the earlier scene with
Mr Jerome, Kipps, terrified, denies that anyone else had been in the
theatre, implying that the real Woman in Black had been present. The
play ends with the rhythmic knocking of the rocking chair as the
lights fade to black. An image of the face of the Woman in Black
lingers behind the gauze for a few seconds.
- The woman in Black (play) Wiki
I've seen the play
and found it rather invigorating and brilliant, I had seen the play
with my sister, but there was a school who watched it with us so the
atmosphere was ruined somewhat. The play is great for those who love
ghost stories and love the creativity of theatre. I give the play
9/10.
THE BOOK
the
story begins with Arthur Kipps, a retired solicitor who formerly
worked for Mr. Bentley. One night he is at home with his wife Esme
and four stepchildren, who are telling ghost stories. When he is
asked to tell a story, he becomes irritated and leaves the room, and
begins to write of his horrific experiences several years in the
past.
Many
years earlier, whilst still a junior solicitor for Bentley, Kipps was
summoned to Crythin Gifford, a small market town on the north east
coast of England, to attend the funeral of Mrs. Alice Drablow. Kipps
is reluctant to leave his fiancée, Stella, but he is eager to leave
the London smog. The late Drablow was an elderly and reclusive widow
who lived alone in the desolate and secluded Eel Marsh House.
The
house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway.
At high tide, it is completely cut off from the mainland, surrounded
only by marshes
and
sea
frets.
Kipps soon realizes there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally
thought. At the funeral, he sees a woman dressed in black and with a
pale face and dark eyes, whom a group of children are silently
watching. While sorting through Mrs Drablow's papers at Eel Marsh
House over the course of several days, he endures an increasingly
terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and
appearances by the Woman in Black. In one of these instances, he
hears the sound of a horse and carriage in distress, closely followed
by the screams of a young child and his maid, coming from the
direction of the marshes.
Most
of the people in Crythin Gifford are reluctant to reveal information
about Mrs Drablow and the mysterious woman in black. Any attempts by
Kipps to find out the truth causes pained and fearful reactions. From
various sources, Kipps learns that Mrs Drablow's sister, Jennet
Humfrye, gave birth to a child, Nathaniel. Because she was unmarried,
she was forced to give the child to her sister. Mrs Drablow and her
husband adopted the boy, and insisted that he should never know that
Jennet was his mother. The child's screams that Kipps heard were
those of Nathaniel's ghost. Jennet went away for a year. When
realising she could not be parted for long from her son, she made an
agreement to stay at Eel Marsh House with him as long as she never
revealed her true identity to him. She secretly planned to abscond
from the house with her son. One day, a horse and carriage carrying
the boy across the causeway became lost and sank into the marshes,
killing all aboard, while Jennet looked on helplessly from the
window.
After
Jennet died, she returned to haunt Eel Marsh House and the town of
Crythin Gifford, as the malevolent Woman in Black. According to local
tales, a sighting of the Woman in Black presaged the death of a
child.
After
some time (but still years before the beginning of the story), Kipps
returns to London, marries Stella, has a child of his own, and tries
to put the events at Crythin Gifford behind him. At a fair, while his
wife and child are enjoying a horse and carriage ride, Kipps sees the
Woman in Black. She steps out in front of the horse and startles it,
causing it to bolt and wreck the carriage against a tree, killing the
child instantly and critically injuring Stella, who dies ten months
later.
Kipps
finishes his reminiscence with the words, "They have asked for
my story. I have told it. Enough."
I
loved the book, the details, twists and turns in each chapter were
great and perfectly placed. I highly recommend it to from young
teenagers to adults and those who love ghost stories, I give the book
an 8/10.
SUSAN HILL
Hill was
born on February 5th 1942 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
She attended Scarborough convent school where she became interested
in theatre and literature. She wrote her first book The Enclosure
whilst at King's College London which was published by Hutchinson.
WEBSITE
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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