The House On Cold Hill - Touring

I need to sleep on it but James appears to be living in 2009, our lead is a web designer and yet a significant plot point is how amazing and out of this world he finds an Alexa he gets for his 40th birthday.

My Dad is in his 70s and he can bloody work an Alexa.

The Agatha Christie TC lost the licence a couple of years back but are still on the go with a new name as the Classic Thriller Theatre Company - currently out on the road with their version of The Lady Vanishes.

The House on Cold Hill - Theatre Royal

O'Hare is killed on the day he moves into Cold Hill House, over 30 years later Ollie and family become the next residents of a location that no one has wanted to move into.

Strange happenings start to make the family wonder if there really is something in the story of the grey lady who supposedly haunts the house - especially when Ollie discovers that all of the previous male residents have died on their 40th birthday and *GULP* for Ollie that’s this coming Monday!!!!

Cripes on a stick, this is a rotten script - a script so devoid of scares, chills and twists that it defies belief that anyone will find this in any way frightening or indeed shocking, If you cant see the final moments coming from the time that they are mentioned much earlier on in the show then go home and watch some Poirot to get yourself up to speed on spotting significant clues.

As mentioned above Ollie is a web designer in his 30s but when given an Alexa as an early birthday present he's in awe of it and seemingly cant believe what it can do - which is a point hammered home by repeated mentions in the first 15 minutes or so that he's rubbish with technology BUT he's bought the haunted house through the proceeds of the sale of his advertising company. We're told to think he's a luddite but he's got a laptop, phone etc. Its character motivation to move the plot towards where it has to be for things to go bump in the night rather than actual development of a real character.

Bit of a spoiler - Alexa of course gets taken over at various points by the ghoulies to spout messages of doom and so on AND YET it takes the husband and wife ages to switch the bloody thing off! Its not until the daughter points out that it could be a local with a grudge who has hacked their wi-fi (something which Ollie understands!!!) for them to decide to not have it on.

Ah yes, the daughter - now I spent the first half hour or so thinking that as Ollie is about to turn 40 its odd that he has a daughter in her 20s but no, she is only 16 (bumped from 12 in the book apparently) but its clearly someone older playing down but she isn't doing a very good job, admittedly the script has seemingly been written by someone who has never talked to a 16 year old girl in the last 30 years and she's struggling to be a real human but it just doesn't work.

One of many quite unfathomable pieces of casting in this. Not one single person on stage comes out of this with any credit - well maybe the actor playing O'Hare as he gets bumped off after 2 minutes into this. Joe McFadden is giving us rising stages of hysteria as Ollie, Rita Simons is too laid back as his wife, Charlie Clements cant decide if he's playing Egon from Ghostbusters or Joe Grundy and Tricia Deighton is channelling 250% of Angela Lansbury in Blithe Spirit as the local ghost whisperer cum house cleaner.

The script is clunky, the direction is clunky, the acting is clunky and its just not scary. The lighting seemed to be running around 15 seconds ahead of the action as well - I think this was by choice but it becomes clear early on that something is going to happen as characters will be in the middle of conversations as the lighting changes for us then to be shocked by the ghost of O'Hare appearing at the window in spectral form or some such. Its tell rather than show and for me it diminishes any shocks there may be.

PLOT REVEAL ahoy!!!

But despite all that, I actually had a good time. Its only a 100 minutes long so zips along (plus interval) and the script even gets in a gag about Strictly. Would I recommend it, No. Would I ever see it again, No. But did I actually think it was fun to watch, yes.

Sometimes its nice to see something that is just so misconceived that you cant help but be swept up in the ineptness of it all.

6/10 - entertainingly awful.