Writers: Joe Facer & Adam Sandy
Director: Adam Sandy
The tall ceilings and high draughty windows of The Space on the Isle of Dogs are the perfect setting to be transported to an abandoned school in a sleepy Yorkshire town. Here, two troubled siblings embark on a ghost-hunting expedition, where it’s more than just the afterlife that’s being disturbed. Although faltering, Alex and Maggie Go Ghost Hunting from To The Ocean production company is a solid attempt at an emotional delve into familial love, the price of Domino’s pizza and the afterlife.
Alex is highly strung, to put it lightly. He has to film himself locking his front door to avoid stressing out, has very few friends, and loves ghost-hunting. Maggie, his sister, is two hours late for said ghost-hunting expedition, orders a pizza and thinks it’s all rubbish. After some coaxing, Alex and Maggie clutch a £340 ghost-locating device and listen closely for signs of the afterlife. Instead of spirits, Alex and Maggie take a trip down memory lane and find themselves confronting the ghosts of a dysfunctional father and a deceased mother and find the broken pieces of a family still reeling from grief.
Performers Beccie Allen and Joe Facer as Maggie and Alex are the saving grace of this show. They deliver meaningful and purposeful performances and bring the siblings and their history to life. They have great on-stage chemistry, creating a compelling energy that makes the performance smooth to watch. Excellent movement direction from Ewa Emini aids this, taking the audience to all corners of the unconventional space of The Space and giving the show a dynamic feel.
Despite these quality performances, however, Facer and Allen still fail to establish themselves as loving siblings, and that’s to do with the faltering pacing of Facer and Adam Sandy’s writing. There are genuinely moving moments in the show, nicely punctuated with emotion from the performers, especially around how grief and sibling love interact. However, these moments are dropped into the dialogue without build-up and are therefore completely lost.
At one moment the pair realise they’ve both been trying to contact their deceased mother using the ghost-hunting device, but the mood quickly turns funny and jokey again before the audience has time to settle into this. At another moment, one comment from Maggie sees Alex ready to give up the whole ghost-hunting idea, a move in complete antithesis to the work Facer has done to portray Alex to be obsessive about his hobby.
In the same way, the jokes and light-hearted moments are solidly written, with embarrassing childhood stories and petulant sibling bickering that are familiar to all audiences and entertaining to watch. However, the jokes fail to land because the mood oscillates so quickly. It’s hard to keep up with how the audience is expected to feel and react to the pair on stage, and consequently, key moments of the pair’s family history are simply lost. With little empathy for the siblings, the twist in the second half is less impactful, and the ending remains unsatisfying.
In short, the moving parts of a heartfelt exploration of grief and family trauma are there in Alex and Maggie Go Ghost Hunting, but the show is unfortunately held back by a lack of fine-tuning.
Runs till 4 November 2023
