Brighton: The Enfield Haunting coming to Theatre Royal

Written by Paul Unwin, and directed by Angus Jackson, The Enfield Haunting will play at Theatre Royal Brighton from November 14 to November 18.

Based on the first-hand accounts of a ghost hunter, The Enfield Haunting is the true story of what happened when Peggy Hodgson tried to protect her three children from a poltergeist in their home in North London.

The Hodgsons had no idea what a poltergeist was when, in the summer of 1977, furniture and toys started moving of their own accord. They were an ordinary, working-class family, who lived in a council house, but for the next eighteen months became the centre of one of the most famous poltergeist events in the world.

Janet, the possessed sixteen-year-old, was nearly pulled out of a window. The local lollipop lady saw her floating six feet in the air in an upstairs room and Janet was found fast asleep in a neighbours’ bed. There are tapes of Janet growling for hours in a voice that doctors said would destroy a sixteen-year-old girl’s vocal cords after a few minutes.

Catherine Tate in rehearsals (Image: Craig Sugden)

Catherine Tate, who is renowned for her TV, film and theatre work, including her current BBC series Queen of Oz, The Catherine Tate Show and her portrayal of Donna Noble in Doctor Who, will play Peggy Hodgson.

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David Threlfall, who played Frank Gallagher in TV series Shameless, is an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company (he played Don Quixote in the RSC’s production) and last year was nominated for a Tony Award for his role in Martin McDonagh’s The Hangman, plays ghost hunter Maurice Grosse.

David Threlfall and Angus Jackson in rehearsals for The Enfield Haunting (Image: Craig Sugden)

Writer Paul Unwin said: “Before Guy Lyon Playfair the poltergeist expert died in 2018, I spent a long afternoon with him in his basement flat in Earls Court.

“He and Maurice Grosse had spent months with the Hodgson family trying to protect them, but also make sense of what was going on. What Guy told me was terrifying.

“So much of what appears to have happened was impossible to fake and yet at the centre of the whole thing were real people trying to make sense of their lives. The Enfield Haunting is a psychological ghost story. It is a ghost story for now.”