The Enfield Haunting Reviews

"Catherine Tate and David Threlfall deliver the shivers"

"While it doesn’t have the big jump scares of 2:22: A Ghost Story or The Woman in Black, this lo-fi horror builds in creepiness"

"The play does not set out to scare us witless but to make us think about the nature of fear"

"Directed by Angus Jackson, the production trades on lo-fi, retro horror befitting its period setting, with a few disappearing tricks by illusionist Paul Kieve. Like the original Poltergeist films, this feels clunky and kitsch. But the creepiness builds as the question of “Who’s doing this?” is explored."

"Since previews, the show – whose press night was delayed – has been honed to 75 minutes and is performed straight through. As brief as that sounds, it does not feel truncated and the unease is turned up, bit by bit."

"Tate delivers plenty of motherly nervousness, even if her characterisation feels a little too flat."

"Even Catherine Tate can't reanimate this limp ghost story"

"What's scary is that anyone thought this pedestrian effort would make for a good West End show"

"... sadly this limp effort will barely raise more than a sigh."

"At that running time, you’d expect it to canter along from scare to scare until a crash bang wallop finale, but the confused narrative and pedestrian dialogue sucks the energy out of the show. And then it all just ends very abruptly."

"[Tate's] performance here grew more assured as the show went along – what started out as mugging and over-annunciating like it was a comedy sketch, became more nuanced and the best thing in it by the end."

"The show's other star, Threlfall, is a warm presence as kindly investigator Maurice Grosse, though is hung out to dry a bit by the scenes where he believes the ‘possessed’ child is his dead daughter."

"The scariest thing here is the ticket price"

"Catherine Tate and David Threlfall star in this occasionally sharp but insufficiently shocking play about a poltergeist-beset council house"

"... this short, occasionally sharp but insufficiently shocking new play"

"In theory the play, less a whodunnit than a whoisdoingit, straddles the threshold between the rationally explicable and the unfathomable, but it never quite crosses over from the watchable into the spine-tinglingly compelling."

"The cast, directed by Angus Jackson, are admirably committed"

"A shocker for Catherine Tate"

"Tate is not a strong dramatic actress at the best of times and this is a markedly long way from good times"

"... its all-pervasive tedium is enlivened only by the odd burst of audience giggles."

"Reports from preview audiences were scathing and now here it is, minus its interval and, seemingly, the majority of what must once have been the first half, given that Paul Unwin’s script dumps us unexplained in medias res."

"Threlfall steers an admirably straight course through all this nonsense, suggesting Maurice to be a decent and kindly man who is grappling with his own past trauma"

"Paul Unwin's attempts to explore social themes fall flat"

"Paul Unwin's play is inspired by the well-documented 1977 story of a supernatural infestation in a North London council house."

"The preview performance I attended was less than impressive. The “special” effects consisted largely of blackouts and screams, furniture overturning in the dark and a menacing figure appearing at unlikely moments. Hovering between scepticism and belief, comedy and thrills, Angus Jackson’s insecure production is lacking in atmosphere."

"Unwin’s attempts to explore class differences, social inadequacy and the long-term effects of grief are shallow. Any impact they might have had is eradicated by the uncertain tone."

"This Enfield Haunting isn’t scary — but don’t blame Catherine Tate"

"The staging of the real-life case of a suburban poltergeist needs more thrills."

"It’s a mystery. Not so much the existence or non-existence of ghosts — The Enfield Haunting comes down pretty firmly pro-poltergeist, albeit while suggesting that our wounded psyches and desperate imaginations matter too — but what it was that drew Catherine Tate and David Threlfall to this well-meaning misfire of a show."

"In finding its own way The Enfield Haunting spends too much time trying to fill you in, less time scaring you. It is capably staged by its director, Angus Jackson, aided by the illusion consultant Paul Kieve. Yet it ends up as a conversation piece punctuated by sporadic jump scares. Even at 75 minutes it drags. Fright levels are what film censors might refer to as “mild peril”."

"A candidate for worst play of the year"

"Those creaking noises aren’t things that go bump in the night, they’re the sound of a script falling apart."

"Forget the supernatural jiggery-pokery, the far-fetched thing here is that Catherine Tate and David Threlfall signed up for such a fiasco."

"The problem here is that the drama utterly fails to build tension; it’s as if every other page of dialogue has gone missing."

"At least Ella Schrey-Yeats and Grace Molony are suitably creepy as Peggy’s wayward daughters, who may or may not be the villains of the piece. By the end of this mercifully brief evening, though, much of the audience was responding with indulgent chuckles rather than gasps of terror."

"Catherine Tate’s spooky tale is epically, almost thrillingly bad"

"Paul Unwin’s poltergeist story, inspired by ghostly shenanigans in 1970s East London, has the ingredients for a hit – but it’s a January frightfest for all the wrong reasons"

"Telly star Catherine Tate must be rueing the day she signed up to The Enfield Haunting. On paper, it probably sounded like a great idea... But in the flesh, it’s epically, almost thrillingly bad."

"The real investigator in this story is Maurice Grosse – played with a welcome injection of dignity by David Threlfall. But he’s got his work cut out supplying tension here."

"Seasoned director Angus Jackson’s production doesn’t have much a read on any of this mess. He just serves it all up, lukewarm"

"Coarse, clumsy and fright-free"

"Catherine Tate and David Threlfall struggle to enliven this flat-footed, frisson-free retread of the famous 1970s poltergeist case"

"This ramshackle offering from Paul Unwin, co-creator of TV’s Casualty, is certainly a shocker – but only, alas, because it is so astonishingly cack-handed and unambitious."

"Angus Jackson’s production, despite the star casting of Catherine Tate and David Threlfall, is coarse, clumsy and so fright-free that it makes The Woman in Black look like The Exorcist."

"Unwin’s soapy writing gives neither actor much scope for nuance, so they duly serve up a pair of cartoons, gamely struggling to inject life into the bathetic dialogue."

"Catherine Tate and David Threlfall are stranded in a scarily dull ghost story"

"The trigger warnings at The Enfield Haunting are misleading. They alert audiences to bright lights and big noises. They should have braced them against a feeble script and a production that quavers along as if afraid of its own ghost."

"It is almost impressive. Dramatist Paul Unwin and director Angus Jackson have gathered so many promising ingredients, summoned so shiny a cast – and come up with something completely flat."

"Catherine Tate and David Threlfall labour through this bewilderingly dire play about the famous ’70s poltergeist"

"Unwin’s script is a bewildering muddle, which gestures at the fact that Janet and her sister Margaret (Grace Molony) admitted to having been on the wind-up, but then piles a load of wildly unsubtle, jump-scary supernatural stuff on top."

"There are attempts by Unwin to flesh out both Peggy and Maurice, but the play is so short that his brief attempts at adding depth just end up confusing matters."

"... the most terrifying thing about ‘The Enfield Haunting’ is that nobody stepped in to stop it before it reached the West End."