The Haunting of Susan A – King’s Head Theatre, London

Writer and Director: Mark Ravenhill

Time at the current King’s Head Theatre is about to be called and as the preamble to his new show The Haunting of Susan A, playwright and co-Artistic Director Mark Ravenhill wants the audience to reflect on everything this tiny room behind a pub has and could have been. Before a theatre, he continues, it was a bare-knuckle private fight club but that’s not the only thing to have happened in this space.

Before Ravenhill gets too carried away with the echoes of sporting prowess, blood and sweat, a young woman steps out of the audience to challenge this glorified view of the past. Once an actor almost 20 years ago she has a terrible tale to relate, of her first play here at the King’s Head, of the writer trying to recreate his personal history and of the ghostly hand on her shoulder that haunts her still.

Across only 60-minutes of performance, The Haunting of Susan A has two intertwined narratives. The first is of Ravenhill rhapsodising about the legacy of this small but influential venue, creating a lasting memory before the King’s Head Theatre decamps to new digs by conjuring up scenes of its past as well as imagining what the future holds for this room when the actors vacate. Disarmingly simple, Ravenhill talks to the audience as himself, almost as a tour guide evocatively exploring the truth of the room.

The second and more dominant story starts with a false note – of course actor Suzanne Ahmet is not some random audience member urged back to this place one last time to tell her truth and as she demands the floor, the transition is notably stagey, the lines too fluid, too rehearsed to be natural speech. But soon the story itself takes hold and through a combination of explaining her experiences and peopling them with character-full accents and eccentricities, the story of Susan A springs to life.

The joy of the play is in its site-specific nature, drawing on the physical location to give the audience a grounding in the story. Susan points frequently to seats where her director Tim was sitting when he demanded a relevant costume change that takes her down a blind alley, or where she was standing when she first felt a presence touch her shoulder and try to pull her round.

Ravenhill’s segment has done its work too and before long the connections between the two descriptions of the back room at the King’s Head take on a startling relevance. He notes the haphazard workings of the old lighting board ready to be scrapped as the company moves home, the same lighting board that designer Jo Underwood uses to deliver a couple of very nice jump scares and deft changes in illumination that bring such atmosphere to the story. And listen to that opening monologue carefully because even the detail of that recurs.

Ahmet is a gripping storyteller, holding this small room in thrall as she unfolds this creepy tale, adopting different accents and voices, recreating scenes and carefully controlling the intensity of the room through her vocal and physical reactions. Ravenhill too plays his part as the interrupted and outraged Director, and while their harried interactions never ring true, the play is as much a celebration of the process of theatre as it is this theatre.

Ravenhill balances the pressure by allowing Susan’s story to advance before grappling control and returning briefly to a lighter note, a technique that effectively teases out the tension. This may be the last time some of us are ever in this room the playwright tells us, and The Haunting of Susan A will certainly follow you home.

Runs until 26 June 2022