Morgan Lloyd Malcolm on Adapting One of the Greatest Ghost Stories Ever Written
Posted on
Playwright **Morgan Lloyd Malcolm** reckons that “telling a simple story in a dark room with some well-placed noises is just about the most fun you can have in the theatre.”
Which is just as well because early next month the playwright-- best known for the smash-hit *Emilia*, which began at the Globe before transferring to the West End, and for a spooky version of *Dracula* at the Lyric Hammersmith last year – has a new version of **Henry James**’ terrifying ghost story, [*The Turn of the Screw*](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/play/the-turn-of-the-screw-ticket), opening at the [Arcola](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/venue/arcola-theatre-london). Commissioned by Blackeyed Theatre, the production will then tour the UK.
**James**’ 1898 novella tells of a young inexperienced governess who is employed by a man to care for his niece and nephew at an isolated house in the Essex countryside. She is under strict instructions not to bother him. The children are delightful and charming. But as time passes, she becomes convinced that they are haunted and corrupted. She sees the ghosts of Miss Jessel, her predecessor, and Peter Quint, a former estate worker, both dead. Many argue that it is the best ghost story ever written, a deeply unsettling tale which Stephen King described as one of “secrets best left untold and things best left unsaid".
**Lloyd Malcolm**, who has a love of the gothic, as a child would spook her friends for fun (“I was probably a bit of a nightmare”) and is part of a collective of female writers set up during the pandemic called Terrifying Women with the aim of showcasing more female-led horror stories, says that *The Turn of the Screw* has always been at the top of her wish list of stories she'd like to adapt. But she admits that it is a tricky proposition.
“The challenge is how to make it a satisfying ghost story but also to honour the ambiguities of the original text.”
**James**’ story can be read at face value as a straightforward ghost story. But there are unsettling ambiguities in it which raise many questions. Quite who is being haunted? Is the governess an unreliable narrator as many have suggested? Or are the ghosts very real? Who and what should we believe? It is such a disquieting read because it is so slippery; as a reader you are never quite sure what exactly is happening. That’s harder to do in the theatre, an embodied form which is always showing us stuff.
“I think how people think of the story has become very binary,” says **Lloyd Malcolm**. “There are those who believe that there are ghosts, and then there are others who think she has constructed the story to cover up her crime.” **Lloyd Malcolm** is not saying where she sits in this debate. “I am much more interested in asking how and why we respond to these stories in particular ways when we hear them. I want to honour the story but also give the audiences the opportunity to make up their own minds.”
But **Lloyd Malcolm** does point out that there is something very contemporary about a woman telling a story and the story she tells being questioned or just dismissed.
“Women have not been believed through the ages when they speak up and tell their stories. They end up having to tell them over and over ---whether it is the stories of women which have emerged from the Epstein files or the testimonies of #MeToo. It feels as if women have been endlessly telling their stories and yet nothing ever changes.” Interestingly, with *The Turn of the Screw*, it was not until many years after its publication that the idea took hold that the governess is a hysterical woman and that everything that happens is in her mind.
**Lloyd Malcolm** reckons that while horror has often been seen as the preserve of male writers, women are well placed to write it, not least because they often experience life through a lens of fear.
“It is a safe way to play out our fears and talk about what it feels like to be a woman in the world at the moment.”
With *The Turn of the Screw,* she is hoping to do just that.
“There is always an expectation that horror and ghost stories are all about the jump scares. I think those jump scares really have to be earned. For me it is all about building tension and sending people down into the dark corridors of their own minds. If you are telling a ghost story in the theatre, for the writer and director, that’s where the real skill lies. And it can be all the scarier because of it. We are working with a magician on the play, but we really don’t have the budget to go full bells and whistles with special effects. But that’s OK. Because I know that if we get it right, it will be all the more creepy.”
[*The Turn of the Screw*](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/play/the-turn-of-the-screw-ticket) plays at the Arcola Theatre from 11 September to 10 October 2026. Book your tickets today.