28 September – 9 November
Superstition means that hotels around the world, and particularly in the US, sometimes avoid having thirteenth floors and rooms numbered 13. The writer M.R. James recognised the alluring effect of these ill-omened digits in a short story titled Number 13, first published in 1904. James – the finest ghost-story writer this country has ever produced – is the inspiration behind Room 13, the new production at the Barn Theatre, Cirencester.
Writers Duncan Abel and Rachel Wagstaff use the original setting of a remote, storm-lashed hotel in Jutland, but take four more of the master’s tales, including The Mezzotint and The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, update them and weave the results into a longer piece in order to investigate the way in which the shadowy world of ghosts and restless spirits may extend its fingers – claws? tentacles? – into everyday reality.
An academic named Anderson (Samuel Collings) is in Jutland to examine some old texts whilst being accommodated in a hotel which is never likely to figure on a list of the best bijou destinations. In the adjoining room is Jacobs (George Naylor), who seems to be travelling just for the sake of it before getting married. The quartet is completed by the hotelier’s Irish wife, Mary (Ffion Jolly), and a member of staff Lena (Alice Bailey Johnson).
There are puzzles and curiosities. Why does each of the two guests believe his neighbour to be occupying the elusive Room 13? What caused the terrible scarring round Lena’s neck? Why do the lights keep fizzling and popping off? How come pictures drop unaccountably off walls? Why isn’t the internet working?
It transpires that each of the four is haunted by an event that happened to them or someone they knew, and the isolation of a dark and stormy night makes them willing to confide in each other. Tales of mystery and horror with settings ranging from a sanatorium, to an archaeological dig, to remote rural Ireland are deftly dramatised with ingenious sound and lighting effects to keep us on our toes.
But Room 13, under the direction of Loveday Ingram, is more than an artful anthology of James’s stories. In between the starts and scares there is some discussion of the reality of the spirit world, with Anderson the arch-sceptic maintaining that there’s always an explanation, while others are more willing to believe. And in the background hovers the sinister figure of Kristen (Philip Pellew), the hotel-keeper, husband to Mary, and possessor of some alarming DIY kit. The play ends with a twist which is very much a horror-film trope.
James was quite a subtle writer, reserving the horrid revelations until the end of the story. Room 13 relies on more blatant effects, whether shrieks and screams, abrupt plunges into darkness, figures leaping out of cupboards or swinging from nooses, and so the mood is more reminiscent of Psycho than the world of Edwardian academia which James inhabited for his entire life. Nevertheless the production zips along, keeps the audience gripped and provokes gasps and laughter, mostly of the nervous sort.
★★★☆☆ Philip Gooden, 2 October 2024
Photo credit: Alex Tabrizi
