The Haunting of Hill House review – a slick and spooky fright night — SkimNews
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- Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel 'The Haunting of Hill House' has been adapted for the stage, with Stephen King having previously deemed it 'as nearly perfect a haunted-house tale as I have ever read'
- Director Martin Constantine's stagecraft deploys jump scares, creaky hinges, blowing bulbs, hovering blankets and sliding furniture to build an intensifying sense of threat from curtain up
- Lighting by Chris Davey and video projections by Duncan McLean on a panelled backdrop conjure the mansion's many rooms and ratchet up the fright-factor toward the climax
- Clancy Ryan plays Eleanor, capturing her giddy freedom, gnawing insecurity and yearning for belonging after 11 years caring for her bullying, recently deceased mother
- Sophie Lenglinger plays Theodora as 'slinking, seductive' while Robin Morrissey plays heir Luke as 'cocksure yet brittle'
- Stef Smith's adaptation explores Eleanor's unravelling and her conviction the house is haunted by her mother, but struggles without the novel's access to Eleanor's inner world
- A tweaked ending and added twist on the mother-daughter theme take the story in a 'less nuanced, albeit enjoyably creepy,' direction than Jackson's original
Why it matters: For fans of Jackson's novel, the production's technically impressive scares may satisfy the fright-night quotient, but the adaptation's inability to access Eleanor's inner world — and its tacked-on ending twist — risks reducing a psychologically devastating text into conventional haunted-house theatrics.
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