Fox Valley Rep's 'Woman in Black' fails to haunt

Some might find it hard to believe that “The Woman in Black” is the second-longest-running nonmusical play in London theater history — especially after seeing Fox Valley Repertory's just-OK take on this creepy two-actor ghost story.

The stage adaptation of Susan Hill's spooky 1983 novel, set in the Victorian era by the late playwright/actor Stephen Malatratt, has been packing in crowds at London's intimate Fortune Theatre since 1989. No doubt there is bound to be even more interest in “The Woman in Black” when a new film adaptation starring “Harry Potter” actor Daniel Radcliffe hits movie screens in early 2012.

But in the meantime, there's the chance locally to catch “The Woman in Black” as directed by Fox Valley Rep's artistic director John Gawlik and starring two normally exemplary Chicago-area professional actors: Ron Rains (the Goodman Theatre's “A Christmas Carol,” “I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change”) and Alex Hugh Brown (Fox Valley Rep's “Red Herring”).

Rather than present a straightforward depiction of Hill's novel, Malatratt structured his adaptation as a play within a play. It focuses on a certain Mr. Arthur Kipps who approaches a young professional actor to help him theatrically tell his ghost story as a means of possibly exorcising his conscience. The younger actor then takes on the role of Kipps in his younger days as a duty-bound solicitor who is sent to the late Alice Drablow's north England estate — seemingly cursed by a spectral and vengeful Woman in Black.

This switching back and forth between the actors — questioning how the tale is being told then also telling the tale — could be a theatrical coup at stoking an audience's imagination to fill in the scary blanks. But those assembled for Fox Valley Rep don't always succeed in executing the script's complex dual storytelling demands.

It doesn't help matters that Rains and Brown are both shaky with their initial British accents in the rather dry opening scene. Once Rains gets a chance to morph into a variety of other British types, his diverse dialect and character-building skills come to the fore.

Unfortunately Brown doesn't really build a compelling reason for the audience to care about his young Kipps.

When all is revealed about the Woman in Black, audiences should be shudderingly unsettled by the potential mortality of their loved ones and their own lives.

Fox Valley Rep's mediocre “Woman in Black” may prod some pangs of fear and dread now and then, but it ultimately drops the ball at being truly terrifying.