A Ghost In Your Ear is set in a recording studio, where an actor, George, has turned up late to record a job at short notice, so short he hasn’t read the script yet. It turns out it’s a horror story. As he and his friend, the sound engineer Sid, settle into a night of work, things gradually start to seem amiss. The story on the pages begins to escape them and soon George begins to see things. From there, we are plunged into a full-on horror show.
The central question for a show like this is can it get your heart racing? The production comes through that test easily. Beyond employing many tried and tested horror methods, the show uses a binaural head – a microphone shaped like a human head that picks up the location of a given sound – to amp up the intensity. It is simply more engaging to watch a horror show with headphones on with two sound designers and an actor having total control over what you are hearing. This, along with a well written ghost story, means the nightmare of a non-scary horror show is avoided.
George Blagden and Jonathan Livingstone are excellent, as George and Sid, with the former delivering what would be a very good audio horror story in its own right. They create a fun, sparky energy to begin before carrying the tension of the play with ease through expert pacing. Blagden’s use of the binaural head on stage is particularly effective. Using the license of a character who went to clown school – and wants to show that off when possible – he is able to get the most out of the hyper-sensitive mic.
Anisha Fields’ recording booth set is excellent. As well as creating a sealed off sound booth for Sid to sit in, the whole stage is sealed off from the audience by another pane, giving the set a trapping feeling. It also offers two pieces of reflective glass which Ben Jacobs’ lighting design uses well. Design whose, however, sound is the star of the show. Ben and Max Ringham achieve a nice mix by utilising the binaural microphone without becoming over reliant on it. Some ‘in-the-room’ effects mean you can never safely relegate your fear to being just in the headphones alone; it feels like something really could be there with you. Overall, it’s a very slick production.
Its limits come mostly in the script itself. This is not to say Jamie Armitage’s writing isn’t good. The fictitious story by ‘A.C. Pritchett’ is genuinely compelling, and Armitage generates some scares with enough twists to keep us engaged. However, really, really good horror has more behind it than well-executed jump scares. A Ghost In Your Ear opens up some themes – the power of storytelling, the fears of impending fatherhood, the impacts of abuse – but fails to use the subversive power of horror to tell us something new about them. The play is certainly entertaining, but it doesn’t really reach the full potential of its genre.
A final misgiving is the presence of Mark Gatiss, who is given the (presumably) gag credit of ‘Spiritual Advisor’. Gatiss plays the voice of the ghost and he does it well. The problem is, his voice is so recognisable as to be slightly alienating. Rather than making you think of some unknown horror it makes you think of… well, Mark Gatiss, which isn’t quite as scary. The fact he also does the pre-show announcement and the heamakee test makes his few spoken lines much less scary than they otherwise might have been.
Nonetheless, this is a strong show with some great performances and a wonderful design. All in all, it’s highly entertaining and will absolutely get you nervy, though it isn’t likely to keep you up when you get home.
A Ghost In Your Ear is running at the Hampstead Theatre until the 31st of January. Tickets available at https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/.
Reviewer: Ralph Jeffreys
Reviewed: 9th January 2026
North West End UK Rating: