2:22 A Ghost Story – Grand Opera House York

Writer: Danny Robins

Director: Matthew Dunster and Gabriel Vega Weissman

2:22 A Ghost Story opens to audience gasps, as Jenny (played by Shvorne Marks) abruptly appears onstage, serenely painting a door, halfway up a ladder. This is the first, and fortunately not the last of the shocks in store from the play, which effectively pulls out all the stops to shake up the audience.

Jenny is painting because she has recently moved into this home with her stargazing but sceptical husband Sam (James Bye) and baby Phoebe, and will be hosting an old friend Lauren (Natalie Casey) and her new beau Ben (Grant Kilburn) for dinner. The main problem is that Jenny believes they are not alone in this home – and Sam, emphatically disagrees. Once the dinner party begins, this tension is brought to the surface, unearthing fears about parenthood, marriage, class anxiety and more in the process.

The open plan domestic set (designed by Anna Fleischle) reads as old bones with a new IKEA face, the bottom floor of a house in the process of modernisation. Particularly impactful are the digital clocks above the door and the fridge. Their ominous red glow gives them the feel of a countdown, with increasing tension as to what it will mean for our characters when they reach the titular 2:22. This is matched well by Lucy Carter’s lighting design particularly in the bright red strip lighting framing the front of the stage in scene transitions, which acts like a gauze obscuring stage craft and an alarm for audiences, as the red glow drenches theatre.

Fortunately, it’s not all doom and gloom. There is a lot of quick draw humour throughout the script by Danny Robbins. If “fear is just a response” as Sam states, then so is laughter, which Robbins sprinkles in liberally to ease tensions, and show the history and chemistry between our cast. The characters are written believably to sit on a spectrum of belief and argue their cases convincingly. It’s a clever way to address audience theories, without breaking the fourth wall. 

Kilburn performs this best, bringing honesty, charm and pragmatism to his role as Ben the builder which balances out his surprisingly spiritual streak. It doesn’t hurt that the costume design by Cindy Lin is so well observed, with the slightly too tight suit and no socks with loafers exposing a lot about Ben (not least his ankles). The cast as a whole do fine work bringing their characters to life, flaws and all, as they reminisce about old times, past lives and inevitably, bring up old ghosts. 

Sound (designed by Ian Dickinson for Autograph) is another highlight of the play, particularly with the crackling baby monitor, which is both recognisably domestic and reliably creepy. Further fun can be had with a surprisingly strong soundtrack featuring Massive Attack, Groove Armada and other millennial classics. However those fox screams used to provoke jump scares wore a bit thin into the second act, but by then the characters have bigger concerns, as we draw closer to the dreaded 2:22 witching hour.

The groundwork is laid satisfyingly well for the finale, with enough plausible red herrings to confuse the picture. It is also done in such a way that means a second watch would be a satisfying experience, despite knowledge of the finale – a ghost story worth retelling.

Runs until Saturday 4 April 2026