LET me start by saying I wish I was writing this three nights into the run – but I’m not.

I really wanted to be able to say go see this, spook-lovers. Alas.

The show, Classic Ghosts, at the Palace Theatre, features two classic stories, the Signalman, by Charles Dickens, and MR James’s Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad.

I was at first thrilled to see an elaborate set, well made.

The child in me loved the drama and detail of it all.

The adult in me then proceeded to be quietly distressed.

Despite the good cast and costume, and the audience being eager to be chilled in the beautiful theatre, the adaptation of Whistle suffered because the dialogue was quite flat, whereas the Dickens retained the vibrancy of the original prose.

The main problem came when the backdrop screen depicting ghostly apparitions stalled and Jack Shepherd was left filling in, in his long-johns.

Cue an awkward wait, and a reluctant techie coming out to tell us something had gone wrong and they were trying to fix it.

Jack handled it with natural aplomb, keeping the audience engaged in light banter about ghosts, but “Whistle” never really recovered.

Then the long interval while they struck and re-set for Dickens’s Signalman.

Then the furtive mess of two doors which would not stay shut and their farcical management by two seasoned actors who should’ve been graced by better technical preparation.

Such is the spirit of live theatre – the frisson of the unexpected – but I resent it when something purporting to be the spirit of theatre (overwrought set) actually prevents the spirit of theatre (actors, words) kicking in.

Jack Shepherd and Terrence Hardiman, of eminent experience, could have had us shivering in the palm of their hands.

Yet their skill was hamstrung by the failure of thousands of pounds worth of faff, to the point where they couldn’t continue unless it was fixed.

If the whole stage had been stripped, everything unplugged, and the actors set free from the confines of clunk, they would have done a greater job with just the very thing that the whole evening was in celebration of – the words.

Classic Ghosts
Until Saturday,
Palace Theatre, London Road, Westcliff
£16.50 to £25.50
01702 351135