2:22 A Ghost Story, Noel Coward Theatre, August 2021: Time’s Up

2:22 A Ghost Story by Danny Robins has haunted the West End since 2021, having spooked, at last count, five different theatres in seven different runs, the latest ending in August of this year, with additional stints in Australia, Los Angeles, Dublin and the odd tour thrown in for good measure. Like a particularly stubborn ghost, it refuses to stay away, though I wish it would.

The plot centres on Jenny, who has recently given birth to her first child. I’m not sure what Jenny’s profession is, or if she has one, but as portrayed by Lily Allen, she should consider writing a book on how to be a size zero after having recently popped out a sprog. In addition to a new baby, Jenny also has a new home to decorate. Jenny’s husband, Sam (he may be new too), is away, or was away, or is pretending to be away. Either way, she’s left at home with the unseen baby when spooky shenanigans begin occurring at exactly 2:22.  You may wonder, what is a new mother doing up at two in the morning when the baby is asleep? Most new parents would be passed out, resembling a painting of a dead saint at that time of night if they were lucky enough for their little one to sleep through — but not our Jen — she’s full of beans and doing a spot of late-night/early-morning DIY, painting a tiny patch of wall.

The spooky goings-on have something to do with the baby monitor, through which Jenny hears furniture being moved around and what sounds like a man’s screams. Then, we flashback or forward, I think — to a dinner the new parents are hosting for Sam’s friend Lauren, whom he has known since university, and her new beau, Ben. All of this newness had me craving something old, like a plot in I could actually care about. At regular intervals, Jenny tries to convince Sam that the house is haunted. Sam, who seems to be some type of scientist — he wears glasses, our clear cue that he’s a geek or nerd of some variety — is, of course, sceptical about paranormal activity. This is about when I began mentally composing my Christmas card list (I saw the show in February).

2:22 isn’t a play but a vehicle — feature a C-List celebrity in the central role of Jenny and hype with moody marketing images. A comprehensible plot isn’t the point; this is light entertainment half-heartedly pretending to be something more. The entire exercise is meh — neither good, nor bad enough to offer the guilty thrill of truly awful theatre.

The ghost story is a genre that speaks to our humanity, part of storytelling’s arsenal because it grapples with the big question: What is on the other side of existence? It taps into the human fear of the unknown and our desire for rational solutions to the irrational. A good ghost story will create a strong sense of place, ambiguity, and foreboding. It often features a protagonist lost in a state of confusion, grappling with a feeling of isolation, either physical or in relation to others. And the ending should not too neatly answer all questions; it should make sense within the world of the story, but not over-explain and justify to a degree where all mystery is removed.

2:22 misses the mark on many of these fundamentals, despite paying lip service to most. Robins seems to think that by cramming the basic elements of the genre into his story, he’s done his job. The problem is that he has nothing to new to add or anything interesting to say about the form; he may appreciate the ghost story genre, but he doesn’t seem to get it – he misses what makes ghost stories truly compelling. Part of the fun of a good ghost story is the endorphin rush of being frightened; 2:22 is about as scary as a stroll through Hampstead Village on a sunny Saturday morning.

Robins’ ending demands a double dip of suspended disbelief: first, to accept that ghosts are real, and second, to accept his explanation of what has come before the story’s climax. I’m not a believer.

Mathew Dunster’s direction pumps up the volume of every element while simultaneously trying to inject a dash of theatre verité into proceedings by having whoever is playing Jenny cook a risotto on stage. My heart – and stomach – go out to the actors having to eat that concoction eight times a week. I know risotto, and what’s served on that stage is not it. Perhaps the most enjoyable element of the production is watching the actors surreptitiously push the food around their plates, doing their best to avoid putting it into their mouths.

Dunster’s design team deliver no more than what is required. The set design, by Anna Fleischle, is a mundane, realistic take on a middle-class London home, with a lot of red neon thrown in for spooky effect. The result is less scary and more cheap bordello. Lucy Carter designed the blackout-heavy lighting, Cindy Lin is responsible for the unmemorable costumes, and Ian Dickson designed the jump-out-of-your-seat sound.

Dunster is a mediocre director; he’s the theatre equivalent of a “Basic” — always competent, never inspired — and yet, paradoxically, he is in demand. His next big project will be a stage adaptation of The Hunger Games. As godawful as this sounds, it will probably be worse, but it’s a big title with big Hollywood money behind it.

If Dunster is so mediocre, why is he in such demand? The answer may lie in his mediocrity. The great acting teacher Lee Strasberg said, “It takes a great deal of talent to be really bad, and not a lot to be mediocre.” Dunster is the epitome of this sentiment; he is a safe pair of hands who delivers safe, unimaginative productions. For some producers and artistic directors, that’s enough.

Conversely, Dunster’s mediocrity may be his professional superpower. Somewhere along his journey from working in regional theatre to his London career, he discovered a formula for consistently getting his work into the West End. Many before him have tried and failed, some with far more talent. Perhaps the secret he uncovered is that the West End, at its core, thrives on mediocrity. In an industry often driven by risk aversion, Dunster’s ability to deliver competent, predictable fare seemingly makes him a valuable asset.

After having recently emerged from a two-decade-long funk — both creatively and financially — in 1993, the biggest deity in entertainment, Disney, ventured into live theatre. Realising they were sitting on a potential goldmine with their back catalogue of beloved titles, some of which could be made into musicals, they launched Walt Disney Theatrical, which later became the snappier Disney on Stage. In 1994, their first Broadway production, Beauty and the Beast, debuted, directed by Robert Jess Roth – not a widely known name then or now. If you want to understand why Jess Roth has disappeared from Broadway, watch any of the numerous videos on YouTube of the Elton John/Bernie Taupin 2006 musical Lestat which he helmed. Beauty and the Beast, however was a hit; it ran for thirteen years and holds the record as the tenth-longest running show in Broadway history. Disney took an even bigger risk with their next stage venture, a musical of their 1994 animated smash, The Lion King. Disney didn’t hire a known director with a proven commercial track record, or even one with Broadway credits, they chose a Downtown theatre maker who was doing interesting things Off-Broadway. Her name is Julie Taymor, and the rest is history.

Disney has a well-established – and, in some quarters, much-loathed – business model: they are notoriously tight-fisted when it comes to paying talent or anyone else. This might explain why they didn’t attempt to secure a director of the stature of someone like Hal Prince for either of their first two productions. The Lion King is still running on both Broadway and in the West End, having raked in over a billion US dollars on Broadway alone. It consistently grosses over two million dollars in ticket sales per week in NYC, not including the lucrative merchandising revenue it generates. Yes, The Lion King is a cash cow – it is the highest-grossing Broadway show of all time – but it is also a rather wonderful piece of theatre, full of invention, glorious theatricality and heart. Its creativity is part of the reason it remains such a sustainable moneymaker.

Dostoyevsky wrote, “Whoever conquers pain and fear, he himself will be God.” Disney didn’t just succeed, they conquered, and they taught Broadway a few lessons along the way. The Lion King opened in 1997 and will probably outlive us all.

For all the talk about what makes a project “commercial,” directors, writers, actors, and producers truly have no idea what will be a hit. If they did, most productions wouldn’t lose money. Only 20-30% of Broadway shows break even. You have a better chance of not getting divorced than you do of not losing money on a Broadway show. Even Disney has produced duds, such as the mess that was The Little Mermaid. Unlike Broadway, the West End doesn’t publish weekly box office receipts — make of that what you will. My guess is that the failure rate in the West End is only marginally lower than Broadway’s, and that’s due more to lower overall costs, than to greater success. The lower costs I refer to include actors, directors, musicians and stage managers — all of whom are paid less in the West End compared to their Broadway counterparts. Why? Because Broadway still has relatively strong unions.

Trying to concoct a hit is largely guesswork, but if you have Denzel Washington in anything on Broadway or Andrew Scott reading the shipping forecast in the West End, you will sell enough tickets to turn a nice profit. Casting can be key — the right actor, even if they aren’t Hollywood royalty, paired with a warm and fuzzy vehicle, can do the trick. Dunster recently had a big hit with a revival of Shirley Valentine with Sheridan Smith.  While Sheridan Smith alone may not guarantee a hit — witness the recent debacle that was Opening Night — Sheridan Smith in a piece that is nostalgic, familiar, and comfortingly tepid is enough to bring in a certain crowd.

Interestingly, some of the biggest hits of recent decades, and most of the still-long-running shows on both sides of the Atlantic — did not rely on stars upon opening or subsequently.

Chicago being an exception. While it did not open with stars, it now relies on B and C-listers to keep it afloat.

Who would have predicted that a musical about one of America’s founding fathers would become a global phenomenon? The fact that Hamilton is an awful show doesn’t really matter in this argument. The producers were uncertain of its prospects when they moved it Uptown, but the production benefited from glorious luck — the kind of luck money cannot buy — and one of the best marketing campaigns since Dewynters’ iconic campaign for Cats. Luck was on Hamilton’s side in spades: The timing was perfect — President Obama, championed it during the swan song of his presidency, while his successor spoke despairingly about it without ever having seen it; the cast album became a genuine smash hit, spending years in the upper echelons of the Billboard 200; and the show won a truckload of Tonys. All these factors fed into the myth of Hamilton, which has become a juggernaut.

Commercial theatre is not a science; it’s a gamble. You’d think that more producers would occasionally roll the dice on a calculated risk and hope for a bit of that Julie Taymor luck.

Most directors working in the commercial sector aspire to join the Broadway Club — that exclusive group of directors who work regularly on the Great White Way. Dunster had his shot at potential membership when Hangmen was given the Broadway go-ahead.

The production began Off-Broadway in 2018 at The Atlantic Theatre Company, after Dunster directed the 2015 premiere at the Royal Court, followed by its West End transfer. Fate, however, was not kind to Dunster’s attempt at breaking into the big leagues. Hangmen didn’t open on Broadway until 2022, after initially beginning previews in 2020 before being shut down due to Covid lockdowns. By the time lockdowns were lifted, the production had lost its original leading man, whom many believed was the highlight of the production. When it finally opened, it received mixed reviews and was a box office dud, though it did go on to receive a respectable five Tony Award nominations, including a nod for Best Play.

In the unusual scenario of a production garnering this many nominations — especially one for Best Play — Dunster was notably overlooked. Ultimately, the production failed to win any Tonys, did not recoup its investment, and closed in June 2022.

Dunster’s shtick clearly didn’t hit the mark in the Big Apple. He directs from the Tarantino playbook — McDonagh writes from the same playbook, so they are a perfect collaborative match.

Dunster is not a bad or incompetent director; he does not deserve to be spoken of in the same breath as directors such as Sean Mathias. He’s just not a particularly interesting director; he would possibly make an excellent artistic director of a medium-sized regional theatre.

The merit of awards is often debated, and it is de rigueur for theatre people to proclaim their insignificance. Any producer — or pretty much anyone else involved in commercial theatre — who claims not to care about the Tonys is lying. To be fair, producers tend not to play this game; they will shamelessly chase nominations and awards, and rightfully so. Tonys aren’t just an ego boost; they impact careers and can provide a substantial box office bump for most shows that collect awards in the major categories. Unlike the UK’s Olivier Awards, the Tonys have the power to turn a struggling production into a hit.

Recently, over dinner in New York with a group of theatre people, I asked a marketing player why a certain actor was contemplating accepting the offer of a thankless minor role in a West End transfer to Broadway. The response was blunt: ‘Because she’s a Broadway whore and will do just about anything.’

I’m not sure if Dunster is the directing equivalent of this species, but he certainly churns out work at a relentless pace. I wonder if the quality of his work might improve if he simply did less. Why is he doing so much schlock? Maybe he’s stuck on the hamster wheel, knowing it won’t last and that sooner or later he will be found out. Or perhaps he genuinely believes these projects are worthwhile — or maybe he’s chasing the money. If he truly believes in the value of the projects he’s undertaking, that is even more troubling than if he were doing it purely for the money, as it suggests a lack of taste — and there is no remedy for that.

The industry seems to have placed Dunster in a category that he is unlikely to escape: the second-tier commercial director’s pool. He’s not among the prestige names like Jamie Lloyd, Stephen Daldry, Matthew Warchus, Marianne Elliott, George C. Wolfe, Kenny Leon or Sam Mendes.

Nor is he competing for jobs with the hot, younger directors like Lileana Blain-Cruz, Sam Gold, Luke Sheppard, or Rebecca Frecknall.

Instead, Dunster seems stranded somewhere between these groups, repeatedly offered a narrow range of projects with a predictable calibre of talent.

This takes us back to those who employ the Dunsters of the world — they are the real problem, and this is where change needs to take place. Broadway and the West End need a better calibre of producer. Being able to raise money should not be enough; we need producers who possess creative qualities, have a worldview beyond profit, and who actually have a vision about the type of theatre that should be presented in the 21st century. We need producers who want more from the art form and who have a desire to give the public a better, more engaging, and, at times, challenging experience. If you feed audiences a steady diet of junk food, that is what they will become accustomed to — that will be the benchmark from which they judge.

2:22 A Ghost Story will probably return to the West End at some point. I am not sure who the audience will be now that all of the stunt casting seems to have been exhausted, and I cannot imagine that many real actors would wish to waste their time on such thankless fare.

The one performance I did enjoy was from Jake Wood, who provided a dose of humanity, humour, and detail, which was lacking from the rest of the production. I am not sure how he got away with it, but I am glad he did.

Ultimately, like politicians, nations get the theatre they deserve. The U.K. has had 2:22 A Ghost Story and will soon have The Hunger Games — what have we done to deserve this?

TKR