After Sam Daily gives Arthur, Spider as his companion, he returns to the house of Jennett Humphrey’s. When Arthur falls asleep, the dog jumps onto Arthur warning him about something. Animals are known for its natural instincts to sense for disasters or things we cannot see. This makes the audience think of what it could be; is the dog playing around or is it serious.
Suddenly, a sound of a rocking chair rocking starts. The audience will be shocked as there is no one else in the house; they would wonder where it could be coming from, whom or what is doing it. It leads him to a room which is locked, added with Arthur’s desperation to get inside and find out what it is, causes tension. The tension is then kept bottled up as he leaves it for another day.
The next day, he heard the rocking chair again; the repeat would make the audience realize more that before it was not just a coincident, it is a definite thing. The lights shut off, when he stomps the ground it makes the audience jump, because the audience are already on the edge of their seats, waiting for the ghost to appear, and little shocks like a stomp would make the audience frightened with shock and jump.
The door then suddenly flung open with a bang, making the audience jump with a sudden loud sound. Arthur entering the room, makes the audience feel sympathy for him as, he does not know what is on the other side and the our sense that something bad is going to happen to him, as he is also a normal human being.
Audience are puzzled by the fact that the chair is rocking and everything in the room is clean and tidy. This kind of situation would make people wonder; who has been here and why it is so clean. The curtain that is separating the room from the outside could represent a borderline and he has just crossed it. It also distorts the view of him and the room; this can be used to represent the unclear knowledge of the room.
The room is later on messed up completely, as he finds it by following the quiet but creepy sound of a music box. Audience would be shocked by the music as it is quiet and it is coming from an old object. The messed up room was scary as it shows the woman in black’s true colour, she dislikes what has happened and destroys things, which is also a psychiatric action.
The whole play becomes even more fearful at the end when the audience thought it was all over. The actors on stage talks about the ghost which one man saw and the other didn’t, giving it a bit more realism to the whole act which would send chills down the audience’s spine as it may be true and real.
Overall I think the play was really helped by the sound because as the audience you can only be involved with the play through seeing and hearing.
Seeing the things happening in front of you is not as fearful as things u know is happening but u do not know how it is happening. For example the rocking chair and the music box, you could only hear what is happening but you are not sure what is really been done to it and how it is done; however if you see it happen then it would not be as scary because you could see clearly what is done and it does not create a visual image in your head, which for humans would be a lot more fearful than the reality because when someone is scared, they hallucinates and imagine something else.