18 – 23 August
‘Do ghosts actually exist?’ That is the premise that writer Danny Robins poses in 2:22. Robins created the BBC podcasts Uncanny and The Battersea Poltergeist, the latter being the worldwide #1 drama podcast and now the subject of a Hollywood movie.
New mum, Jenny (Stacey Dooley) experiences strange goings on in her new house at precisely the same time every night. Something, or someone, seems to be getting closer, threatening her and her baby. When her highly sceptical husband Sam (Dooley’s real-life husband Kevin Clifton) returns from a trip away she tries to convince him that things aren’t right.
Sam’s old college friend (and old flame?) Lauren (Shvorne Marks) and new boyfriend Ben (Grant Kilburn) make up the cast, along with baby noises from the monitor relaying sounds from the upstairs bedroom. The only way she can get them all to understand is for them to stay up until 2:22 and see what happens.
A digital clock counts down the time.
The setting is slightly claustrophobic, all the while fuelled with copious amounts of alcohol, with a busy modern kitchen and living room bearing signs of the gentrification of an old house in a previously unfashionable part of London. A modern French window has been fitted through which we occasionally glimpse the garden. But only when a motion-activated light comes on. What is going on out there?
Add to that a story of the previous elderly occupants and dead husband, screaming foxes, a dollop of red herrings amid the clues and the usual tropes of thunder and lightning, and the tension ratchets up bit by bit. And did Sam really lose his phone when he was away so he couldn’t ring home?
Clifton’s Sam is irritating from the start, given to expansive arm gestures, a bad temper, and a fondness to demonstrate his general know-it-all smugness. His continual jousting and curious lack of affection to Jenny give the impression that their relationship will not survive long.
Marks, as old friend Lauren, adds to the backstory hinting at possible unrequited love for Sam. Her cockney boyfriend builder Ben delivers much-needed laughs, punctuating the prim prissiness of Sam while also providing first hand experience of supernatural vigils and seances.
Dooley is entirely convincing in her portrayal of a woman desperate to protect her young baby while fiercely determined to prove that something unexplained and menacing is happening.
The show, deploying effective devices of a soundtrack with an ever-increasing heartbeat punctuated with sudden shrieks and blackouts, never failed to hit the panic button in the audience. And all the while a modern Alexa module contributed another ethereal voice in the house.
As with all thrillers we needed a satisfyingly credible denouement and … spoiler alert …the story provides this. Press night featured the occasional misstep in dialogue and some unconvincing fog behind the French windows, but there are enough clues and subplots to keep us guessing, when not jumping out of our seats.
★★★★☆ Bryan J Mason, 19 August 2025
Photography credit: Helen Murray
