Written by Danny Robins

Directed by Matthew Dunster and Gabriel Vega Weissman

Review by Dominic Corr

The Edinburgh Playhouse

No one likes it when the audience don’t laugh at comedy. It’s an awkward feeling; to share a communal space and never smirk, or snigger, or raise a smile when laughter surrounds you. It’s the same with fear; audiences love a solid fright. Especially Scottish audiences. We long for a sense of thrill and terror; and 2:22 A Ghost Story at The Edinburgh Playhouse proves the genuine chills lies in watching belief and scepticism tear into each other while the clock creeps toward something nobody wants to name. Danny Robins’ supernatural thriller, known for its celebrity and ‘known’ casting, arrives with the swagger its tours and West End success story, and even in a venue built for blockbuster musicals rather than creeping dread, it still manages to get under the skin.

The premise is deliciously simple. Like any good ghost story should be. Jenny is convinced her new home is haunted, and the nightly disturbances at precisely 2:22am have pushed her nerves to snapping point. Meanwhile, Sam, her painfully sceptical husband, is determined to rationalise every flicker of fear into something measurable, explainable, preferably electrical. Like all good homeowners, they’re hosting dinner guests, Lauren and Ben, who wander into what should be a pleasant evening and instead find themselves refereeing a domestic cold war about the existence of the afterlife. What begins as a debate over wine slowly mutates into something far stranger, as the room thickens with tension and the characters’ own spectres start to surface.

Alongside Robins’ writing, which has proved itself time and again as a master of the macabre, the casting choices carry the show. Utilising a mixture of more familiar faces, 2:22 is renowned for utilising big names to draw in crowds – but while avoiding the tyranny of shock or stunt-casting. A lot of it is a measure of director Dunster and Vega Weissman being able to balance a compelling script, with a bunch of characters you *know*, you might een hate them, but for some reason they’re always in your friend group – and each of their actions becomes justifiable. The audience’s de-facto protagonist, Shvorne Marks gives Jenny a restless, frayed energy, the kind that captures sleepless nights and too many unanswered questions. Her fear feels rooted in something real, not theatrical hysteria, and that grounding gives the play its emotional weight.

A lot of this stress manifest in Jenny’s partner Same, here James Bye shaping the role with a meticulous eye for detail. His performance is full of tiny tells, the micro‑expressions and half‑swallowed reactions that hint at a man far less certain than he pretends. Bye’s shifts between charm, irritation and brittle logic keep the dynamic unpredictable, and his presence sharpens the play’s central conflict. It’s a frustratingly good performance that, as the clock ticks down, begins to show more cracks in the sceptics armour than a couple of South African wines can achieve.

Perhaps the show’s more obvious casting is in Natalie Casey, who brings a wicked, sardonic warmth to Lauren, cutting through the tension with the kind of humour that only lands when the stakes are high. Even if that American accent is a touch wobbly. Scenes with Marks give the play flashes of genuine intimacy, the kind that remind the audience that friendship can be as haunted as any house. Meanwhile, Grant Kilburn’s Ben offers a grounded counterbalance, his earthy instincts clashing beautifully with Sam’s rigid certainty. Kilburn’s quiet watchfulness adds texture to the group dynamic, anchoring the more heightened moments.

The Playhouse itself is the production’s biggest hurdle. At nearly 3,000 seats, the space is cavernous, swallowing intimacy whole. This is a production, like most of the genre, which excels best in intimate spaces. Yet the creative and tech team work hard to counteract the scale and vastness – and if anything, achieve a sense of emptiness which heightens the fear. Plus, there’s more air for screams… Anna Fleischle’s set, a meticulously realised suburban living room, is pulled in tight against the vastness of the stage, the surrounding black cloth creating a pressure‑cooker effect. But it’s Lucy Carter’s now iconic lighting which shifts from warm domestic glow to sharp, chilling flashes that punctuate the action with surgical precision. It hides a lot of the illusion work, which Ian Dickinson’s sound design aids in maximising every jolt with immaculate timing, Chris Fisher’s illusions adding just enough shimmer to keep the audience guessing without tipping into spectacle for spectacle’s sake.

What makes 2:22 endure is its blend of kitchen‑sink realism and creeping dread. The supernatural works best when it barges into the ordinary, and this production understands that instinctively. The arguments about belief, science and the limits of perception feel grounded, the ones who most certainly had around the student drinking games, even as the play edges toward the uncanny. It is a ghost story for a contemporary age, a reminder that certainty is often just another kind of superstition.

Fear done properly; a masterclass in tension, 2:22 A Ghost Story becomes something more than a night of well‑timed jumps. It is a dive into how fear thrives in the cracks of modern life, in the places where logic falters and instinct take over. The production may lose a little intimacy in such a vast space, but it gains a strange, resonant power, the sense that even the biggest room can feel claustrophobic when the lights go out. It leaves its audience not just startled, but unsettled in the best possible way, questioning what they trust, what they dismiss, and what they might hear if they dared to stay awake long enough; sleep tight.

---