It’s October, so many of us are in the mood for a good ghost story, and you needn’t look any further than Penny Seats Theatre Company’s The Woman in Black.

Never heard of it? Neither had I. But it’s based on a 1983 novel by British author Susan Hill, and Stephen Mallatratt adapted it for the stage a few years later.

With a cast of three, who play a multitude of characters, The Woman in Black went on to become the second-longest running non-musical play in London’s West End—second only to Agatha Christie’s stalwart The Mousetrap—and a 2012 feature film adaptation starred Daniel Radcliffe.

“Several Michigan companies have mounted the show, all with vastly different takes on it,” said Penny Seats’ executive director Lauren London. “One of the most fun things about this show is the number of ways it can be interpreted.”

As London describes it, the two main characters are an actor and a man who wishes to convey to his family and friends, with the actor’s help, a traumatic experience he suffered.

“The show had been on our list for a long time,” said London, who noted various reasons for past delays: post-pandemic challenges, other area companies producing it, etc.. “Finally, we feel like it’s the right moment for us, so we’re thrilled to be able to get a shot at doing it.”

Those familiar with Penny Seats know that a spooky show always gets a seasonal slot.

“We’ve had an annual offering called our Penny Dreadful series, and it is an October show that we mount every year,” said London. “It often involves Gothic horror, or themes like that. [Former artistic director] Joe Zettelmaier began it when he took the reins of the company back in 2020, and now that Julia Garlotte is our artistic director, she made one of her priorities the continuation of that series. It’s a lot of fun and brings a bunch of people to us in October.”

A key part of any ghost story is the element of surprise, so I can’t reveal too much about the plot, other than to say that when a man’s hired to attend to the personal papers of a reclusive, elderly widow who’s just died, he travels to her home, and then, at her funeral, sees a mysterious woman dressed all in black. The mere mention of her seems to terrify the locals.

From there, a spine-chilling story with lots of characters unspools, despite there being only three actors: Michael Alan Herman, Jeffrey Miller, and Princess Beyoncé Jones.

“We love that mechanism of just changing a hat or a scarf, or throwing a coat over one shoulder … to become an entirely different character,” said London. “This show has that in spades.”

Plus, Penny Seats’ take on The Woman in Black, directed by Josie Eli Herman, is being presented in-the-round, making the haunting play a truly intimate experience.

“That is part of what we love about how malleable the space is at Cahoots,” London said. “This will be the third show we’ve done in the round, making it our most popular type of staging in this space.”

This staging choice makes The Woman in Black even more reminiscent of gathering around a campfire to listen to ghost stories.

And why shouldn’t we? ’Tis the season, after all.

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.     

Penny Seats Theatre Company's production of "The Woman in Black" runs through October 18 at Cahoots, 206 East Huron Street, Ann Arbor. Visit pennyseats.org for tickets and more information.