Hauntings

There was a time back in the day when a whole generation of children would grow up being told stories - not just by Mum or Dad, but by Bernard Cribbins, or Kenneth Williams or Rik Mayall on Jackanory. These were neither dramatisations nor the precursor to the plodding literalism of audio books. Rather, they injected new life and personality into often neglected texts, encouraging children to read through the enthusiasm of delivery.

I very much doubt the ghost stories of E.F. Benson or M.R. James ever featured, but Gerald Logan's retelling of their stories comes very close to the spirit of those early-evening introductions to the world of fiction. Presented as simply as can be imagined - on a bare stage but for a single armchair - it would be hard to imagine a better setting for the telling of spooky tales than the deconsecrated shell of St. Swithin's Church, candlelit on the very evening that the clocks change and winter draws in.

Near contemporaries, the works of Benson and James can seem dated to our ears, but at the time, they would have felt resolutely contemporary. What singled both of them out was a willingness to dispense with the gothic baggage that had weighed down fantastical tales for so long, and the introduction of, if not humour exactly, a wry commentary on what was, at the time of writing, the modern world. These were tales of lawyers, vicars and academics. Worldly men, confident of their place in society, until hubris brought them down, both literally and intellectually. Logan's epiphany, it seems to me, is recognising the common thread that links the tales he has chosen, bookended by his own words that signal - to quote another M.R. James masterpiece - a warning to the curious. Settle down, came the advice, as candles flickered all about us, and I'll tell you about The Hanging of Alfred Wadham.

The first of two stories from E.F. Benson, this morality tale of an amoral lawyer brought to mind the discursive style of Robert Aitchman, yet concluded with the sucker punch of W.W. Jacob's Monkey's Paw. Told in the third person, it says much about Logan's storytelling skill that his faithful transcription of the text is never questioned. Interestingly, Naboth's Vineyard, despite being told in the first person - a perspective that might seem more natural for solo performance - was the weaker of the two. Largely a rumination on the sanctity of Catholic confession, the strength of the central character study was no match for the visceral grimness of Alfred Wadham's stealthy footsteps. What both tales shared, however, was Logan's seemingly effortless ability to switch from reported speech to exposition in a way that gripped throughout.

The third tale of the evening was by M.R. James, who famously crafted his stories to be spoken rather than read. Set somewhere along the East Anglian coast, Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad felt a particularly fitting conclusion to a night of Ghost Stories told in Norwich. My only misgiving was familiarity. Whether you had read the original or simply recalled Jonathan Miller's adaptation it was hard to invest fully in the tale's suspense when you knew what was coming. It was still a pleasure to experience a live telling, and Logan's delivery was both considered and characterful, but I would have preferred to be surprised than reminded.

All in all, this was an engaging, atmospheric evening of unsettling, rather than terrifying, moments, leavened by a pleasingly sincere engagement with the source material. I may not have been scared out of my wits, but it was a long, dark walk to the car afterwards.