Cardiff New Theatre 2026
Danny Robins’ 2:22 A Ghost Story arrives at Cardiff’s New Theatre with its reputation well established, having haunted the West End and touring circuit since its 2021 premiere. The Cardiff audience responded in kind: sharp intakes of breath, scattered gasps, and a rousing ovation at curtain call. As tradition now dictates, we are asked not to reveal the denouement. I won’t. Suffice to say the final twist is deftly handled and genuinely satisfying.
Yet what becomes increasingly clear in this production is that the ghost story itself is less the destination than the vehicle. Beneath the surface chills and carefully timed jolts, lies a tightly coiled domestic drama, a study of relationships under strain, of modern anxieties, class tensions, and the fragility of certainty in intimate partnerships.
New mum Jenny played by Shvorne Marks and her husband Sam (played by James Bye) have recently bought and modernised an old London house. Sam has returned from a business trip to the Isle of Sark, inconveniently having lost his phone and leaving Jenny alone with their baby, and with the unnerving experience of hearing a presence at precisely 2:22am. They have invited Sam’s old university friend Lauren (played by Natalie Casey) and her new boyfriend Ben (played by Grant Kilburn) for dinner. Sam arrives home late just as the dinner guests arrive. It is not just the old house that has history that Jenny believes is causing the ghostly occurrences and it is in these interactions of the characters that the play truly thrives.
Natalie Casey and James Bye
In Bye’s hands, Sam is resolutely rational, dismissive to the point of condescension. His rigid scepticism is not merely intellectual; it becomes a weapon in marital skirmishes. Jenny’s insistence that she has heard and seen something is met not with comfort from Sam but with correction. What might initially appear as a ghost story premise gradually reveals itself as a portrait of a marriage negotiating exhaustion, resentments surface, fundamental differences widen.
Casey is the loose cannon in this domestic gathering. She plays the confident hard drinking party animal, yet that façade keeps slipping. She cannot stop reliving past memories of fun times with Sam and treats her latest beau Ben as the best she can get.
Meanwhile, Kilburn’s Ben proves perhaps the most dramatically satisfying presence. Ben’s belief in the supernatural is less about superstition and more about openness, a willingness to entertain ambiguity. His laid-back demeanour forms the perfect foil to Sam’s brittle certainty. The class tension between the two men simmers deliciously; the ghost may be the subject of debate, but reconciling the past and present, science and belief, are the true battlegrounds.
James Bye, Shvorne Marks, Natalie Casey and Grant Kilburn
As the evening progresses, alcohol loosens tongues and exposes fissures. The supernatural question about what is happening at 2:22 becomes secondary to more pressing concerns: who is believed, who is dismissed, who holds authority in a relationship, and how far we will go to protect our version of reality.
Matthew Dunster and Gabriel Vega Weissman’s production retains the now-familiar aesthetic of the piece: red neon strips frame the stage, urban fox shrieks puncture the silence, and those glaring red lights facilitating seamless scene transitions. At times, the technical cues feel slightly insistent, the foxes perhaps over-employed in pursuit of jump-scares, yet they serve their purpose efficiently.
I confess I startled only once. This is not, in truth, a horror play in the traditional sense. Rather, it plays like a contemporary Abigail’s Party with a spectral edge. The haunting is less about what stalks the hallway and more about what lingers unspoken between couples. The ghost story functions as a catalyst, forcing these four individuals to articulate resentments, fears, and vulnerabilities that polite dinner conversation would otherwise suppress.
What makes this Cardiff staging compelling is precisely that emphasis. The tension is emotional before it is supernatural.
By curtain call, it is clear that 2:22 A Ghost Story endures not because it makes us jump, but because it recognises something quietly unsettling about modern relationships: the fear of not being believed, the terror of being alone in your experience, and the precarious balancing act of love, ego and social expectation.
Until February 21
https://trafalgartickets.com/new-theatre-cardiff/en-GB/event/play/222-a-ghost-story-tickets