The Dunstan Creek Haunting

David Ladderman and Lizzie Tollemache, also known as Rollicking Entertainment, are back at Circa Theatre with a new show, The Dunstan Street Haunting. Avid readers of this blog (I fantasise that such people exist) will remember them from previous shows Seven Deadly Stunts and Mr and Mrs Alexander. This time around they’re regaling us with tales of ghosts and hauntings from Central Otago, in the time of the gold rush. They focus particularly on the story of Rose McKendry and Ben Hunter.

The show starts ordinarily enough: a spooky-sounding musical intro comes on – aficionados immediately recognise it as the first few bars of Ghostbusters – and David and Lizzie introduce themselves, ask us who we’re going to call, and then explain a bit about the background of the story they’re going to be telling. They’re assisted in this with some suitably lo-tech equipment – a slide projector and a gramophone. As they explain that they’re going to be telling the story, but also doing some acting, they demonstrate the props and costumes they’ll be using so we can tell which is which.

To begin with, the slide show – and they tell some stories how life was for the people of the goldfields in mid-19^th century New Zealand. In a word, hard. As they show the slides, there seems to be some problem with the equipment – slides are out of order, and a mysterious object keeps appearing. After a while they give up on these technical difficulties, put the projector and screen away, and get on telling the story in the old-fashioned way. They tell us the story of Rose and Ben, and even have Rose’s music box as a prop. Wait, didn’t we just see that in the slide show?

As the story progresses, Lizzie and David act out the parts of Rose and Ben. Without giving too much away, it doesn’t end well. This is, after all, a ghost story, and you can’t have a ghost story without there being a dead person. One of them ends up brown bread. The props, lighting and the sound effects all convey an eerie atmosphere.

And…snap! We’re back in the room. At this point, they decide to do a little experiment. Lizzie is convinced that she can feel a presence, and decides to hold a séance to try and contact the ghost. For this, she needs the help of three members of the audience. We were perfectly positioned in the centre of a row, so unlikely to be called upon. Lizzie selects three victims assistants for the séance, and they take their place on stage.

Does the ghost appear? Does anyone disappear? What happens? We don’t know. The stage manager comes on stage and informs us that the show is over.