Friday, January 12, through Sunday, January 21
Playcrafters Barn Theatre, 4950 35th Avenue, Moline IL
Described by Time Out New York as a play that “provides a pleasurable ripple of fear down ones spine and an uncomfortable lurch in the pit of one's stomach,” the two-man chiller The Woman in Black opens the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's 2018 season January 12 through 21, with audiences invited to witness an evocative stage tale that The Daily Mail called “a truly nerve-shredding experience.”
Based on the 1983 novel by Susan Hill and adapted by playwright Stephen Mallatratt, The Woman in Black opens with lawyer Arthur Kipps hiring an actor to help him recount a story that has long troubled him – one concerning events that transpired when he attended the funeral of an elderly recluse. There he caught sight of a mysterious woman in black, a figure whom the locals insist the actually a vengeful specter who haunts the neighborhood where her illegitimate child was accidentally killed. As the legend goes, anyone who sees her dies, and what results from Kipps' exposure to this apparition becomes increasingly apparent as he and the actor recreate the events of that dark and stormy night.
Notable for having only two actors perform the entire play, The Woman in Black was first produced in 1987 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, England, and opened in London in 1989, where it went on to become the second-longest running non-musical (behind Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap) in West End history. Playcrafters' production is being directed by Craig Cohoon, who has worked at the venue both on- and off-stage in such presentations as The Dixie Swim Club, Stocking Stuffers, and Harvey. Castmates Adam Cerny and Andy Curtiss, meanwhile, were co-stars in last summer's QC Theatre Workshop production of Peter & the Starcatcher, with Cerny also featured in Playcrafters' Deathtrap and the Black Box Theatre's Rock of Ages, and Curtiss a veteran of the Prenzie Players' All's Well That Ends Well and the QCTW's Buried Child.
The Woman in Black will be staged on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., and tickets are $13. For more information and reservations, call (309)762-0330 or visit Playcrafters.com.
