Review of the comedian and storyteller's Halloween yarn

In his blurb for Maybe A Ghost Story, DanieI Kitson insists: ‘I don’t believe in ghosts and I’ve never been comfortable with (or really, any good at) frightening people.’

So while his Halloween monologue has a supernatural air, it is unlikely to chill the bones. Instead, the intrigue comes more from pondering how the interactions between its two central characters will play out than it does from the eerier back story.

The dynamic of these strangers, thrown together by happenstance, is identical to that in the magical Show For Christmas that Kitson created for the Battersea Arts Centre in 2014. One is enamoured by tradition, in thrall to all the trappings of the season, the other a more cynical grouch, dismissing the stuff-and-nonsense and just wanting to get on with life.

They seem to reflect the two sides of Kitson’s personality, too. On one hand, the mesmerising storyteller delighting in the romance of human possibilities; on the other, the more prickly comedian acutely aware that quite a lot of those humans are awful.

‘Ghost stories are just a very long-winded way of shouting boo,’ says Graham, the pragmatist of the pair, who reluctantly picks up a woman in the simplest of Halloween costumes – who is known throughout only as Ghost – when he sees her beneath her sheet and next to her broken-down car beside a country road.

Their trip to get the petrol she needs takes longer than expected, and with more diversions too, as the couple disagree over whether Bonfire Night is better than Halloween but come to a consensus over the delights of low-quality sweets and Ribena. Ghost is keen to reprise the anarchic origins of trick-or-treating, but Graham just wants to get home.

Reading from a book, with just a simple lighting change to indicate a switch of timelines, Kitson draws the audience in with his intimate delivery of the story - the carefully crafted words enough to engross on their own. 

But making the show more entertaining is the way he intersperses the vivid script with wonderfully witty asides, especially in the first half, as he comments on his work and how it’s going down. One especially endearing in-joke portrays us late-night punters as rowdy boozehounds, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The setting is a delight, too. Originally devised for a brief run at Shakespeare’s Globe last Halloween, this story finds a more-than-suitable home this week in the Victorian-era Wilton’s Music Hall in East London, atmospheric with its exposed brickwork harbouring the spirits of bygone entertainers.

It’s scary how charming and engrossing it all is.

• Maybe A Ghost Story continues at Wilton’s Music Hall tonight and tomorrow

Review date: 3 Nov 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Wilton's Music Hall