The play explores the issues of the supernatural and things beyond the human world, such as ghosts and things that are invisible to the human eye; created by mime and the actors and audience’s imagination. I think that the play and the actors explored these issues very well, but I am not sure if they were explored in a believable way. I thought that the first half of the play was quite slow, tedious at times but the second part of the play the pace was picked up quite a bit.
There was only two actors in the play; Mr kipps and the actor along side frequent sightings of the woman in black. Mr. Kipps, the protagonist, has engaged a professional actor to help him learn to act out and reveal his play on stage to his family and friends. By the second act, a shy, timid, and nervous Kipps transforms into the superior actor. At this point, the boundary between Kipps' recollection of the incident merges into the reality of the play the audience is viewing.
The audience learns that Kipps, as a young lawyer, was assigned to look after the affairs of a deceased Mrs. Drablow. He travels to gloomy and mysteriously silent Crythin-Gifford. He attends Mrs. Drablow's funeral and sees a thin, pale, and sickly woman walking around the graveyard. His curiosity of this vision and the towns peoples extreme secrecy of Mrs. Drablow's history leads him to her house: Eel Marsh House.
There are loud and painful noises heard coming from a locked room in what should be an otherwise empty house. He becomes extremely frightened and nervous, but eventually is able to enter into the secret room. The room appears as if someone has recently spent time there- a child. He soon finds out from a local that the boy whose room he had entered was the son of Mrs. Drablow's sister.
In conclusion the play was extremely well acted and the simple set and lack of props highlighted the excellent acting skills the actors portrayed and I really enjoyed the play despite being petrified at times.
