Sounds frightening

Hampstead Theatre Downstairs

Yet another horror story has the critics jumping out of their seats. Unlike the  Paranormal Activity or 2:22 A Ghost Story, which relied on visual stage magic, A Ghost in your Ear relies on sound effects over headphones. An actor played by George Blagden records a horror story alongside a studio engineer played by Jonathan Livingstone. We see him reading the story but, more to the point, we hear the increasingly terrifying recording. Four stars all round for writer/director Jamie Armitage in collaboration with sound design geniuses Ben and Max Ringham.

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4 stars ★★★★

‘If you’ve come to be scared, you’re in the right place. This is a good, old-fashioned ghost-train of a story’ declared The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar. Miriam Sallon for WhatsOnStage agreed: ‘on a bleak, cold January night, what better than a good haunting tale to get your blood pumping again?’

The Times’ Dominic Maxwell was truly spooked: ‘I spent much of these 90 minutes getting the willies in just the way Armitage wanted me to. Does it add up in the cold light of day? Not sure that matters: Anisha Fields’s shadowy set design and Ben and Max Ringham’s sound design help to ensure the light of day isn’t let anywhere near.’

Tim Bano for the Financial Times  explained: ‘It’s a piece that uses mood as much as jump scares to unseat us. The big, loud frights are few, and each is terrifying. As a ghost story, it twists and unsettles and gets under the skin. As a technical achievement, it’s pretty remarkable. It knows we might think the binaural thing is a bit of a gimmick, and even George is sceptical. Until those voices start to whisper in our ears.’

Katie Kirkpatrick at BroadwayWorld said: ‘It’s hugely impactful, and a stellar fit for the horror genre: it creates the illusion that the action is taking place all around instead of on an isolated stage, and weaves its way into the fabric of the piece. You feel breaths on the back of your neck, voices in the distance, creaking floors – it’s very effective and very scary.’

Rachel Halliburton on The Arts Desk praised the cast: ‘Plaudits to both Blagden and Livingstone for an enjoyably compelling management of the journey from the rational to the irrational. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, this should prove at the very least a decent work out for your adrenal gland’

The Standard‘s Nick Curtis assured us: ‘this is a meticulous and artfully conceived blend of storytelling, technology and actorly skill’. Oh, and frightening as well: ‘And the scares? Again, it would be a shame to spoil them, but they are extremely potent and even those that can be anticipated induce horripilation (a lovely word one rarely gets to use, it describes hair stirring on a scalp tightening with dread).’

Holly O’Mahony for The Stage gave some details: ‘It’s when the studio starts mimicking the setting of the story that this horror really takes hold, and the experience of watching it in the Hampstead’s intimate downstairs space begins to feel cleverly claustrophobic and inescapable (although as a voice tells us at the start, you can always remove your headphones if it gets too much). Anisha Fields’ set, which traps George in a soundproofed booth between two glass windows, contains all sorts of hidden facets primed to chill. And Ben Jacobs’ lighting cloaks portions of the stage in thick blackness, making you dread what might be in a corner.’

Time Out‘s Andrzej Lukowksi was impressed, saying it: ‘maybe feels a little too much like an extended episode of Inside No 9 for its own good. But horror theatre is a small, weird and often terrible genre and this is a proper scary little gem’.

Critics’ average rating 4.0⭑

A Ghost in your Ear can be seen at Hampstead Theatre until 14 February 2026. Buy tickets directly from hampsteadtheatre.com

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