In a 1969 appearance on The Tonight Show, George Gobel famously quipped to Johnny Carson, “did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?” The reviews of The Woman in Black, a show that has been running in London for 30 years, have unanimously been highly laudatory, until this one. I’m the brown shoes.

The Playbill notes say that the “early reviews in 1989 paid tribute to [the adapter and director’s] ability to take the audience on a journey whose transport is its own imagination.” During most of the play, I imagined being somewhere else.

The show is supposed to be scary, but my boredom was interrupted only momentarily by some of the sound effects. And though the fog machine at times made it hard to see, there was nothing to see in the first place, including the imaginary dog Spider, the use of which more properly belonged in an introductory improv or mime class. And Spider didn’t even get a credit in the program.

One favorable review admits that “[t]he show is slow to get started.” I’m still waiting. Another admits that “[t]he play [has a] less-than-watertight plot” and a “contrived storyline”. In what universe does that justify a highly recommended?

Yet a third review states that there are three reasons to see the show, one of which is so that you don’t have to go to London to see it.  I can think of other reasons not to go to London, like the food and the weather.  That review also suggests seeing the show because “it has brought light to the long-darkened stage of the Royal George Theatre.” I like the theater, but the play actually brought blackouts and the aforementioned fog, very little light.

If fog is my incentive, I would prefer seeing The Hound of the Baskervilles, which includes a dog that isn’t invisible.