The Haunting of Susan A is both a scary tale and an eerie ode to the hauntings of the King’s Head theatre. Written and performed by Mark Ravenhill alongside Suzanne Ahmet, it began with Ravenhill narrating a brief history of the half-century-old pub theatre, savoring the gruesome details of the bare-knuckle fights it allegedly used to host, imagining which famous people might have patronized the old joint.
Ravenhill barely got around to painting the picture of the possibly once blood-caked walls before he was interrupted by a woman in the audience, who had her own story to tell of her past performance on that stage. The story then split in two, Ravenhill retired to his seat and the woman, Suzanne Ahmet, carried on from there.
Ahmet narrated her journey from being a down-to-earth lesbian engineering student to the highly-strung fringe theatre actor to a troubled recluse, haunted by the previous actor (Victorian era) who she replaced and was killed in an act of extreme violence within the current space.
Ahmet sparkles; in one moment she is a center of calm, in the next, manic energy engulfs her as she hurtles round the stage. She embodies all the other characters of the narrative and interacts with the audience. As you can tell there’s an awful lot packed into this short piece which consistently intrigued and surprised - there were a couple of jump-out of-your-seat moments. Though it wasn’t a fright fest, rather a gruesome uncovering of what life can be like for an actress with a lout for a husband, it was arguably a very contrived piece that relied on the audience’s reaction and indulgence.
Both Ahmet's story and the history of Ravenhill were compelling, but the two strands awkwardly competed for attention on stage. This might change over the show’s run, but as they argue, you could hear one waiting for the other to interrupt. In conjunction with a couple of genuinely terrifying lighting jump-scares, Ahmet and Ravenhill managed to create a palpable sense of dread for the phantasm throughout the narrative.
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While the show won't be everybody’s cup of tea, I really enjoyed its multi layered approach. The content was scary enough to be scary, and its performance of horror was intriguing enough to be entertaining without being mind-numbing.
