This is the fortieth anniversary of the Mill at Sonning and Sally Hughes’s programme for the year reflects past successes in programming the unique dinner theatre venue. Recent successes of the musical Top Hat and the delightful immersive show Still Life return later in the year, and Ray Cooney’s Funny Money is staged this autumn, the thirty-third Cooney comedy season at the venue alongside Hughes herself directing after a five-year gap Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park in the summer. Brian Blessed another regular at the venue directs Busman’s Holiday in April. In 2017 they staged Peter James’s Dead Simple horror thriller and so in 2022 another of his books has been adapted for their stage by Shaun McKenna, The House at Cold Hill. It is clear that she knows her audience and the mix of shows they expect to see each year that will keep them coming back to this delightful venue.
The House at Cold Hill is however a fresh challenge as the horror genre requires some special stage effects to create a shocking thriller that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. The masterful Woman in Black has set a high standard with genuine jump shocks that keep thrilling the audience and the technology in illusions on such shows as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Back to the Future and Ghost at the Piccadilly in 2011 show what can be achieved on bigger budgets. The challenge, therefore, is how to create the sense of a haunted house in a smaller venue where the audience is so close. The Mill’s solution is to rely on the sound and special effects designer Graham Weymouth and some projected images and light effects. If you can’t create spine chilling effects with this genre the temptation must be to go for a comic send-up along the lines of Noel Coward’s Blythe Spirit with Madam Arcati, the clairvoyant. This production falls between the two ends of the spectrum being neither played fully for the horror nor for laughs although there are occasions where the audience reaction was to giggle rather than gasp.
