Original student theatre at Oxford seems contractually obliged to feature jokes about Oxford. Louise Guy’s jokes in The Haunted House went beyond the typical however, being so impressively niche that, even as a student of three years, I struggled to catch all of them. In her original production, Guy reflects this ethos throughout. What could otherwise have been a fairly run-of-the-mill drama is instead imbued with enough cleverness and nuance to create a genuinely novel experience.
The Haunted House focuses on the titular house and its haunting by Gwendolen (Maisie Chambers), ancestor of ‘scatterbrained novelist’ Peter (Ali Khan), who is desperate to escape the aforementioned haunting before he goes insane in the manner of his Uncle George. In pursuit of this, he sells the house to London businessman John (Emily Cunnington), who brings in his lawyer, Catherine (Louise Guy), upon discovering the house’s haunting tenant. Litigation, haunting and romance commence.
Originally planned as a garden play, the opening night unfortunately had to be moved inside due to the weather. The Christ Church gardens are regrettably some of the nicest in Oxford (though of course my own college LMH has better!), and an outdoor staging vs an indoor one is guaranteed to produce a different mood to the play. The stark white and slightly oppressive walls of the MDLT room served to create an atmosphere that echoed that of a lecture hall, invoking John and Catherine’s much-referenced Oxford past. However, it did not so much invoke the Welsh countryside house the production is actually set in. Nonetheless, the Set Designer (Natasha Moore) did a fine job given the unavoidable disappointment of the weather, constructing a simple but elegant country-manor set that served its purpose.
Forgoing one awkward moment when a crew member in the audience had to shout-feed an actor a line, the play seemed to be recited from Guy’s script mostly smoothly. I do, however, mean ‘recited’, as much of the delivery could be both rushed and stilted at points. While still getting plenty of laughs, some jokes could have benefitted from clearer delivery for the full impact of Guy’s writing to be felt. Guy herself as Catherine was one of the stronger performances, and the scenes between her and Ali Khan’s Peter particularly shone.
One actor who was an absolute pleasure to watch was Ali Khan as Peter, who, once again, delivered a very memorable performance. Khan’s performance regularly hit all the right beats, balancing the play’s inherent rom-com playfulness with the genuine concern at the haunting. His short soliloquies – of which he has two – while he frazzles over love and hauntings proved to be some of the play’s best moments. Maisie Chambers’ Gwendolen was another highlight; her early veiled hauntings as a ghost that only the audience can entirely see proved thoroughly effective, if a tad madcap. Her shrieking, singing, and dramatic dropping of objects made for an amusing and startling haunting, alongside the other characters’ well-done reactions. When Chambers converses with John in the play’s latter half therefore, the already established emotivity of her ghost strengthens the twist of the conclusion immensely.
Coming in at just over an hour and a half, The Haunted House fits an impressive amount into its runtime. Dominated largely by one-on-one conversations, the audience is treated to extended ruminations on law, love, writing, sheep, and more, in a variety of character combinations. What could otherwise have been quite dull is instead rendered thoroughly entertaining by Guy, with a consistent quality of jokes that garnered plenty of laughs. The play is a very Oxford law-student one, lingering on jokes about legislation, politics, and philosophy that lands very well with its desired audience. Brayden Lee’s Mr Jones is the epitome of this; those in the audience who knew who Lee was seemed infinitely more amused by his old-man antics than those who didn’t. Yet the audience was not all Law and PPE students: there seemed to be a roughly even split between students and non-students, as Guy’s writing reduces otherwise very particular jokes about ‘the other place – Cambridge’ and ‘Lord Denning’ into something understandable enough for a broader audience than I first imagined. While unlikely to stand up to scrutiny too far beyond the Oxford language bubble, Guy’s production lands well for its intended audience of a Christ Church play.
With the secondary plot between John and Gwendolen coming to fruition at the play’s end, the final scenes shone through. The core actors delivered some of their strongest performances here, with some of the more stilted delivery of the earlier half avoided. By the end, the audience was openly cooing at the resolution to the various mishaps, as everything is neatly resolved. The Haunted House is certainly a play very based in this university and its students, despite its Welsh setting, but that does not at all detract from what is an enjoyable experience. Rather, Guy’s effective handling of those elements is central to her crafting of a very Oxford (by way of Wales) haunted romance.
[The Haunted House, staged by Turtle Arts Productions, is running at Christ Church Cathedral Gardens, 2nd-3rd June, 2026]