For 30 years, the Woman in Black has been haunting theatre stages with its iconic empty rocking chair - still enough to spur shivers down the audience’s spines.

The play follows Arthur Kipps, a lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over him and his family by the ghostly Woman in Black.

He enlists a young actor to help tell his terrifying story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul.

I’d both read Susan Hill’s original book, and enjoyed it, and seen its film adaptation, which starred Daniel Radcliffe straight out of his long-standing role as Harry Potter.

I therefore went into the show with a sense of nostalgia, recalling being scared silly by the film as a 16-year-old with my group of friends.

The play opens with Arthur Kipps meeting with the actor, who hopes to help retell his ghostly story in a bid to find closure to his longstanding curse.

It was a slow start, but perhaps for some it helped ramp up a suspenseful atmosphere. Indeed, when the first scare reared its head, in the form of the sound of a train crashing past the characters, the audience jumped as far out their seats as Covid restrictions would allow.

Darting torch beams, sound design to envy a radio play and the sparse set encouraged the audience to tap into their imagination, and indeed instincts, in following the play.

The minimal props, including an invisible dog and a large basket that doubled as a horse cart, reflected the power of Robert Goodale and Antony Eden to show off the evocative capabilities of acting “without the frills.”

But to me, it was the eerie Woman in Black, a towering figure clad in black with a complexion to rival even my Celtic anaemic one, that stole the show, and most likely, my sleep for the week.