Even in these post-Halloween days, when half-rotten jack-o'-lanterns and crumpled paper skeletons sit at the curb awaiting trash pickup, there's nothing like a good scare. And few stories over the ages have been genuinely creepier than Henry James's classic story of corrupt valet Peter Quint (R.I.P.) wrestling with a neurotic governess for the soul of a young boy.

Fortunately, the Actors' Summit's rendition of The Woman in Black not only resurrects the back-from-the-grave feel of James's work, but is scary enough by itself to cure a serious case of the hiccups. Based on Susan Hill's 1983 gothic novel of the same name, the play centers around Arthur Kipps's fervid recollections of his youthful days as solicitor, when he repeatedly encountered an enraged specter.

The intrepid Kipps learns that the ghost had once been an unwed mother forced to hand over her baby to her stern sister. The child later drowned in a freak accident, leading the bereaved mother to madness and, eventually, an agonizing death. For the next 60 years, her tortured spirit haunted the village like a vengeful Cassandra in Victorian mourning weeds, foretelling the deaths of young children.

The intrepid Kipps learns that the ghost had once been an unwed mother forced to hand over her baby to her stern sister. The child later drowned in a freak accident, leading the bereaved mother to madness and, eventually, an agonizing death. For the next 60 years, her tortured spirit haunted the village like a vengeful Cassandra in Victorian mourning weeds, foretelling the deaths of young children.

The play-within-a-play shrewdly blends old-time radio sound effects and narration with a stripped-down theatricality reminiscent of Thornton Wilder. An empty chair suddenly starts rocking, suggesting the presence of evil. The woman in black herself, in a breathtaking theatrical moment worthy of Edgar Allan Poe, suddenly materializes at a funeral, shimmering in a blasphemous halo.

Filling the demands of a script nightmarish in both content and challenging structure are Wayne Turney and Peter Voinovich. Radiating a joyous innocence and wonder, and looking quite like a stuffed owl, Turney's experience hosting a children's show is apparent. His Kipps is a reluctant storyteller turned Pied Piper, blithely leading the audience into treacherous territory. Voinovich's controlling actor character, employing the charmingly overenunciated English accent of a road company Sherlock Holmes, balances his co-star's whimsy. He easily covers the emotional terrain, ranging from self-mocking pomposity to wide-eyed fright.

In a play that depends on sleight-of-hand staging, where production values are essential, director Neil Thackaberry is not altogether comfortable -- but he does manage to keep the sense of psychological terror intact. Richard B. Ingraham's evocative sound, Dan Polk's sepia lighting, and Mary Jo Alexander's fusty costumes all add the appropriate verisimilitude.

The Woman in Black may not be a fount of profundity or subtlety, but it just may be one of the most satisfying scares since Henry James turned that screw.

The Akron Beacon Journal - October, 2002
Ghouls, ghosts and other things that go bump in the night
All walk the stage in 'The Woman in Black' at Actors' Summit
By David Ritchey

Halloween invites us to be pleasantly scared or to pretend to be scared. What adult hasn't faked terror at the sight of a 6-year-old child on the doorstep saying "Trick-or-Treat" in an effort to get a Halloween goody?

That's what happens this Halloween season with "The Woman in Black" at Actors' Summit. This production invites the audience to fake terror. (I was just pretending. I wasn't really afraid.)

The program identifies "The Woman in Black" as a ghost play, with the script adapted by Stephen Mallatratt from the book by Susan Hill. The cast for "The Woman in Black" is two men: Wayne Turney (Arthur Kipps) and Peter Voinovich (the actor). Where is the woman in black you ask? She's dead. But, who is that roaming across the stage and through the theater? Can she be a ghost?

The complicated plot deals with Kipps, who hires an actor to perform a script he has written. However, the script contains a good deal that is autobiographical in a story dealing with accidents, the death of a child and a woman who can't find peace. The story takes place in a theater -- a theater not too different from that of Actors' Summit in Hudson, but this one is in England. Don't forget to add cold weather, rain and a mist or fog. The script-within-a-script calls for the actor-within-the-new-script to play a lawyer who goes to an old mansion that is on a little island. Only one small path leads from the water to the mansion and that path is surrounded by quicksand.

The elderly lady of the house has died, and the young lawyer must go to the mansion to sort through her papers. At the mansion, locked doors open, sounds come from empty rooms, a dog barks and a woman in black strolls through the acting area.

Scared?

Someone died and the butler didn't do it. In fact, several people died. What else do they have to do in an old mansion that is cut off from the world by a thick mist?

Go with someone who won't be surprised if you're pleasantly scared and who won't be embarrassed if you scream.