2:22 - A Ghost Story premieres in Brighton: We review this spine-tingling modern classic

But such was the hype around 2:22 A Ghost Story’s several acclaimed West End seasons, we were willing to overlook our fear to see the show when it launched in Brighton last night.

It’s playing at Theatre Royal Brighton until Saturday as part of the show’s first UK tour, which is taking it around the country until mid-2024.

To book tickets, see the website.

The Theatre Royal is the perfect venue for a show about ghosts, famed as it is for having its own apparitions who roam the theatre, including former theatre manager Ellen Nye Chart who is said to walk the royal circle.

You could almost feel the tension in the atmosphere as we were seated in the stalls waiting for the show to start. The room was charged and ready. And within five minutes of the curtain rising (metaphorically speaking that is, this modern production doesn’t require a curtain) my sister and I had already jumped about ten feet in the air. Good work, Team 2:22, good work!

It’s hard to say much about this relatively new production for fear of giving the game away, but it’s based around the character Jenny (Louisa Lytton) believing the house she has bought with husband Sam (Nathaniel Curtis) is haunted.

Their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren (Charlene Boyd) and new partner Ben (Joe Absolom) come round for the evening and hear about the strange goings-on.

Jenny convinces them to stay until 2:22, the time it always happens, so they can witness it for themselves…

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Although my sister and I had been genuinely worried about whether we’d cope with seeing this supernatural thriller, in my opinion it sticks just on the right side of being scary without becoming terrifying.

We were on the edge of our seats all night, the tension never letting up, but there was never a moment when we were so frightened we thought we’d have to leave (we’re that wimpy this had actually crossed our minds!).

At times, the room felt almost electrically charged and there were many moments were we, the audience, let out a collective shriek. But it was all, thankfully, a little tamer than I’d feared. Maybe not great if you’re expecting hard-core scares, but great if, like us, you still want to be able to sleep at night.

A four-handed production, each of the cast played their part well, from Lytton’s stressed out mum Jenny to Curtis’s know-it-all husband, scientist Sam.

Joe Absolom is great as builder Ben, who thinks he can contact the dead, and Boyd’s Lauren, a boozy and self-confessed ‘Switzerland’ of a friend, who can see both sides of the ‘believe’ argument.

Written by award-winning writer Danny Robins, creator of the hit BBC podcast The Battersea Poltergeist, and directed by Matthew Dunster and Isabel Marr; 2:22 promises an adrenaline-filled night where secrets emerge and ghosts may, or may not, appear.

At the end of the show, you’ll have just one question to answer: Do you believe in ghosts?