The Turn of the Screw Tickets

Playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm reckons that “telling a simple story in a dark room with some well-placed noises is just about the most fun you can have in the theatre.”  Which is just as well because early next month the playwright-- best known for the smash-hit Emilia, which began at the Globe before transferring to the West End, and for a spooky version of Dracula at the Lyric Hammersmith last year – has a new version of Henry James’ terrifying ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, opening at the Arcola. Commissioned by Blackeyed Theatre, the production will then tour the UK. James’ 1898 novella tells of a young inexperienced governess who is employed by a man to care for his niece and nephew at an isolated house in the Essex countryside. She is under strict instructions not to bother him. The children are delightful and charming. But as time passes, she becomes convinced that they are haunted and corrupted.   She sees the ghosts of Miss Jessel, her predecessor, and Peter Quint, a former estate worker, both dead.   Many argue that it is the best ghost story ever written, a deeply unsettling tale which Stephen King described as one of “secrets best left untold and things best left unsaid". Lloyd Malcolm, who has a love of the gothic, as a child would spook her friends for fun (“I was probably a bit of a nightmare”) and is part of a collective of female writers set up during the pandemic called Terrifying Women with the aim of showcasing more female-led horror stories, says that The Turn of the Screw has always been at the top of her wish list of stories she'd like to adapt. But she admits that it is a tricky proposition. “The challenge is how to make it a satisfying ghost story but also to honour the ambiguities of the original text.”