Review by Stuart Miller . . .
A Ghost in Your Ear is a rare theatrical treat. It’s not a comedy with plenty of laughs or a drama that stirs up emotions with nuanced characters. It is a Halloween-season yarn that combines old-fashioned spooky storytelling with an immersive sound experience to provide a distinctive adventure.
The concept is simple. Lucas (Lucas Iverson) is an actor whose career is in stasis so when his friend Sid (Owen Campbell), a sound engineer, offers up an audio recording gig he jumps at the chance even though the new studio is well outside of London and he hasn’t even gotten any pages to read in advance. The entire play is set in this new studio and after some pre-recording banter (with nice bits of foreshadowing), they get to work.
The show is produced by Audible at the Minetta Lane Theatre and is a perfect fit for the brand, given that it is all about storytelling and sound. We hear it entirely through headphones so as Lucas acts out the story and moves around the microphone and sound effects are added for dramatic effect, the sounds come at us from all directions. This approach significantly enhances the drama.
The story Lucas is acting out and reading to us is a straightforward ghost story. A lonely man whose life is falling apart takes on the task of clearing the contents of his late father’s remote house after decades of estrangement. But as he settles in, he hears things that go bump in the night. And thump. And worse.
There’s not much in the way of character development or literary aspirations, but it doesn’t really matter: the tale hooks us and Iverson’s committed performance as a reader keeps us entertained. As Lucas starts getting spooked by the story he’s reading, we gradually realize that some of the sounds (and voices) he’s hearing and things he’s seeing are not being heard or seen by Sid in the control room. The story is coming alive . . . and it’s coming for Lucas! That’s pretty much all I can say without giving away anything, except that the show sticks the landing in terms of explaining it all and in a final twist that a good horror story often conjures.
Writer/director Jamie Armitage, a Tony nominee for directing Six: The Musical, metes out the story at a perfect campfire pace; slow enough to let the tension build without dawdling too long at any point. He also metes out the jump scares judiciously, knowing that this play is more about the words than the visuals. Working with sound design by the Tony-nominated duo Ben & Max Ringham (A Doll’s House, Prima Facie), Armitage and Iverson make sure those words keep you leaning in, listening intently, wondering what’s next.
While Campbell is solid in a small role, the show really hinges on Iverson’s performance as both an audio reader and as a man losing his mind as the story takes it over. Iverson, who recently got his big break on The Pitt, took over at the last minute for Harry Richardson, causing a delay in the opening of the show. But he has plunged right in with an animated performer as the reader, breathing real panic into his character as the play hurtles toward its conclusion. The story’s not as scary as vintage Stephen King, but it’s one you’ll want to tell your friends about so they’ll go see it too.
A Ghost in Your Ear at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane, NYC through November 22. For ticket information, please click here.
Photos by Tricia Baron.
Headline photo: Owen Campbell and Lucas Iverson at the curtain call in A Ghost in Your Ear.
