If you don’t believe in ghosts, you may have to reassess once you read our interview with writer Matthew Campling, who draws on his own family’s experience living in a haunted house for his new comedy Ghost About the House, which starts performances in just under a month at London’s King’s Head Theatre. Book ahead now!
Ghost About the House is set in two time periods, 70 years apart, in the same grand house in Islington, near the King’s Head Theatre itself. The premiere production is directed by Scott LeCrass will star Sioned Jones, Timothy Blore, Matt Gibbs, Joshua Glenister and Joe Wiltshire Smith.
1936
Approaching the Second World War, Ian, the young master, is in love with Leonard, the butler. Edward, a handsome friend of the family, seduces Ian but also woos fragrant Lady Millicent. Millicent’s too-young suiter Henry makes a desperate attempt to win her.
2016
Ian has become the Ghost, haunting the lives and splitting the relationship of new owners Eddie and Alex. Eddie introduces into the mix Lenny, a young man he’s picked up. The mischievous Ghost perceives a great likeness between Lenny and his long-gone love, the butler. Meanwhile, the dreaded EU Referendum speedily approaches!
The five actors play two time-connected roles in the 90-minute play billed as “a sizzling comedy of ghostly interference, impossible modern relationships and sidelong swipes at our political uncertainty.”
Ghost About the House premieres at the King’s Head
Talking to… Matthew Campling
With less than a month to go until performances for Ghost About the House begin at the King’s Head Theatre, we catch up with writer and producer Matthew Campling.
Your last play The Secondary Victim was a serious drama about a female psychotherapist. What appealed to you about writing a comedy?
Ghost About the House is my 11th produced play. I usually write fairly serious subjects but with a lot of humour. Ghost is nearly all comedy, but with a little serious subject matter to make a richer textured entertainment. The interesting thing, for me, about Ghost was it basically dictated itself. I would write a couple of scenes, lie down to recover, and when I woke up, my mind was full of the next scenes which I then wrote down. Maybe the ghost wrote the play…
Do you believe in ghosts then?
It’s not so much that I believe in ghosts as there are supernatural goings-on and to not believe in them means missing out on some very interesting experiences. And, yes, I have lived in a haunted house. When I was 17-18, we lived in a posh but gloomy house in Durban, South Africa. Every night at some point the door handle would rattle and the door would creak open. Fortunately, I had a lot to distract me and I didn’t take it seriously, I assumed it was the cats, although afterwards, I realised they could not have turned the round handles.
After we moved from that house, we began sharing experiences. My older brother Chris two doors down also had the rattle and door open. My mother, who would lie on the sitting room couch at night when my father was snoring, heard footsteps coming along the corridor, to stand behind her. She looked up thinking it was one of us and there was nothing there. To her immense credit, she merely pulled the covers over her head and went back to sleep. I once came into my sister’s room, the gloomiest, and her doll’s cot, which was always on top of the cupboard, was right in the middle of the floor, as though deliberately drawing attention. Then one of the big glass-fronted cabinets in the kitchen, which was installed with huge rawlplugs, tore itself out of the wall.
Susannah Doyle & Gary Webster in Campling’s last play The Secondary Victim at the Park Theatre
At that point, my mother spoke to the ghost – she stood in the sitting room, trusting it could hear – and said that we didn’t mind it being there but it had to stop scaring us. I think things improved, although my father also revealed that the reason why he used a low, uncomfortable cellar as his study was that the high comfortable one gave him the creeps. I had also at some point when we were there visited the high comfortable cellar, and although no voice actually said ‘get out’, the atmosphere was so malevolent I didn’t return.
What are the challenges of writing across two very different time periods in the same play?
Fortunately, as I say, the play basically wrote itself. I just finished one scene, then had a rest, then when I woke up the play continued to write itself, the 1936 scene followed by the next 2016 scene. I should add that this is the only time it’s been that easy, and I have subsequently revised and developed the original ‘instinctive’ draft, which involved deliberate thought. The idea of the two time periods, linked by the ghost and played by the same five actors as different characters, was so I could show the audience who the ghost was when he was alive.
I don’t like zombie films because the humans treat the zombies as something to be smashed apart. The point is: the zombies were once human, they are victims. My favourite part of the play is waiting for the ghost to do something that the audience knows is coming and the characters on stage do not. It’s the play’s USP (Unique Selling Point as we used to say in advertising, a job I did and disliked.)
What is the significance of the modern setting being just prior to the 2016 EU Referendum?
One of my previous contemporary British plays, The English Heart, went up until six days before the Referendum. This one includes the Referendum. I wanted to write characters whose own little lives are so complicated that they cannot address the Referendum – and are left haunted by what they didn’t do at the right moment. That’s the bit in that’s not comedy.
The cast of Ghost About the House
Tell us about your cast and creatives.
After an exhausting but creative and rewarding auditions process, we have a lovely talented and lithe set of actors who are gagging to share with the audience their enjoyment of Ghost About the House: Sioned Jones, Matt Gibbs, Tim Blore, Joshua Glenister and Joe Wiltshire Smith. All are stars, really, it will be a joy to watch them. I really do think it will be a big summer treat. My director, the equally lovely Scott Le Crass, is a genuine pleasure to work with, and it’s a relief to say that genuinely, if you know what I mean. We’ve got our read-through and first cast photocall on Wednesday 9 May and I’m looking forward not only to hearing the play read for the first time but also to get lots of great photos – hopefully, to appear on MyTheatreMates soon!
What’s been most enjoyable so far?
Many years ago, a man who was high up in personal coaching asked me, in relation to my work ambitions, ‘What are the conversations you love having?’ At the time I was doing another job (PA in local government) that I didn’t enjoy and wasn’t much good at. I thought the idea of loving work conversations completely beyond my professional ambitions. Jump forward to a couple of months ago. Scott the director and I were having tea at the Kitchen Cafe at the National Theatre – and I suddenly thought: ‘I’m loving this conversation‘. I think that’s what we need in this business. Good conversations. It’s our version of nursing or any other vocation.
Anything else you’d like to add?
No time like the present for going onto the King’s Head website and booking tickets to Ghost About the House! It’s always cheering in the morning to catch up with what tickets have been sold the previous night. In the weary slog of working up to the opening night, as everyone who’s done it knows, it feels like one heavy foot placed in front of the other. But then there’s that brilliant moment when everything’s done into the theatre. On the way there, the greatest encouragement is to see more ticket sales.
Learn more
We also love this interview Matthew Campling gave to Gareth Johnson about Ghost About the House. 
