Whistle and I’ll Come to You is a fine adaptation of M R James’ 1904 story ‘Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad’, a slight tale – almost an urban legend – that like so many of its time couples a small act of earthy transgression with a good helping of supernatural comeuppance. 

Here, Ferrymead Heritage Park – a reconstruction of an Edwardian township just outside of central Christchurch – is recast as a quiet village in East Anglia, and we are late night visitors to the local lodge. 

We are led for a short tour through the darkened town as the caretaker, Mr Williams (a wonderfully sonorous Mike Adams), sets the scene and fills us in on some of the town’s chequered history. This part feels more casual than creepy, despite a rather perplexing jump scare, and this is the only part where the delivery of what I presume is largely scripted material feels a little loose. We are lucky with the weather, though; it’s a crisp and still night, and the darkened Edwardian shops and houses are a fittingly eerie backdrop. 

The main act is in the lodge itself; we are brought in, offered cakes, tea and sherry (always a winner) and corralled into the lodge’s space where we are seated for the performance. 

The story is straight-forward: a scholar, Miss Blanche (Nataliya Oryshchuk), is in the village to explore some archaeological remains that are widely purported to be haunted, and her smug reliance on academic intellectualism falls away as she is drawn into the town’s ghostly secrets. 

There are lovely moments of stillness and silence, and in this sense the performance conveys beautifully the gothic dread of the original short story. While much of the action is set in Miss Blanche’s hotel room, at times the gauzy screen that forms the wall is backlit and we see key pieces of action, set down at the beach, play out in shadow. It’s a conceit that both looks gorgeous and adds to the increasingly dreamlike and uncanny atmosphere.

On a more conceptual level it draws Miss Blanche into a dreamlike space in which her own supposition of what is rational and what is superstitious becomes unmoored. The slippage is emphasised through Tom Harris’s fitting and spare soundscapes. 

This simplicity carries through to Oryshchuk’s performance. Very often she is alone on stage, in her room, and a great deal of suspense is built through the specificity of her body language. Her arrogance, then her confusion and doubt, and then finally her abject fear are writ large across her face, through the tension in her shoulders and through the cast of her eyes. It’s a beautifully compelling performance, but unfortunately it means that in comparison the part of the terrified maid (Sophie Rea) feels quite over-played. 

I am a sucker for a good ghost story, and by the end of the show I am fully invested in Miss Blanche’s downfall. However, there are aspects of this show that need further clarification, such as our own relationship to the action and the characters. I also don’t feel that the through-line from the almost cheery ghost walk to the performance’s eerie final moments is as pointed or as tight as it could be, perhaps because of the peculiar shift between immersive participation and a more passive audience-performer relationship in the play proper.

However, I am also a person whose tastes run quite dark, so this also reflects my preference and my desire to be more unsettled.

In terms of tone, though, this show aptly invokes the ambience of the Edwardian ghost story – lamp light, long shadows, and pregnant silences – and I hope that the company further develops this piece or offers something similar in the future.

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