For a former “Ten-Pound Pom”, you’d have to say actor John Waters has done pretty well for himself. 

 A household name in Australia – 20-years in Play School, Claude in the tribal-rock-love musical Hair, Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar, countless TV series such as Rush and Rake, and, superlatively, in his own tribute show to John Lennon, Looking Through A Glass Onion – there are few people who will not have encountered him. 

In this post-covid era, when all performing artists took a hit, Waters and fellow muso Stewart Arietta have given up the John Lennon show in favour of a new one aimed at the baby boomers – Radio Luxembourg Live, which celebrates the songs of the British pop invasion, think the Moody Blues, Kinks or The Who. He suspects there will be plenty of younger takers, too.

However, right now he’s reprising a role he first played 18 years ago in the mystery thriller-shocker The Woman in Black, adapted to the stage in 1987 from the book by Susan Hill.

The title is perilously close to that of The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins, one of the earliest sensation mysteries – but this is very different, as I find when I catch up by phone to Waters at His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth. 

“It’s ideal in an old theatre like this,” he says. “Sometimes when the lights go down, it feels very special.”

Almost as special as in the petite Fortune Theatre in Russell Street London where after starting in provincial Scarborough, The Woman in Black, played for 13,232 performances, becoming the second longest-running non-musical play in West End history, after The Mousetrap.

But unlike The Woman in White, which was based on the true story of a woman’s incarceration, The Woman in Black is all fiction.

It tells the story of a lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Waters), obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over him and his family by the spectre of a Woman in Black. 

Kipps hires a sceptical young actor (known as The Actor) to help him tell his terrifying story so to exorcise the fear, but not long into the story both find themselves caught up in the sinister world of Eel Marsh House.

“The play began in Scarborough but it has become a massive worldwide success,” Waters tells me. 

“Stephen Mallatratt was asked to adapt it to the theatre and it has been done brilliantly for two men – one of them is the old man who trying to work out how to tell the story that happened 30 years previously, and Daniel Macpherson is the young actor who helps me act out the story.”

“He plays me as a young man and I learn how to play all the other characters that have affected my life.” 

The setup is starkly simple, he says, two men in the 1950s talking about what happened in the 1930s.

It’s more or less an empty theatre in Robin Herford’s production, but it soon enough has the audience setting on the edge of the seats with the aid of a handful of props and costumes and with the help of atmospheric lighting by lighting designer, Kevin Sleep, who recreates the atmosphere of trains, houses and offices, eerie marshland lighting and, of course, the obligatory fog.

There are some “very scary” sound effects by Rod Mead and Sebastian Frost, who have recreated the sounds of horses’ hooves, a road accident, spooky footsteps and screams, but no music. 

“It’s a fantastic exercise for two actors – we tell the stories by going in and out of the many characters we talk about. Sometimes we talk about what they do, but at other times we go back into the action. 

“This play is all about being absolutely terrified – it’s astonishing. The audience becomes a bit more freaked out more and more,” he says.

Of course, it’s set in a bleak, misty milieu, the imaginary village of Crythin Gifford, somewhere in the north-east of England. 

“It’s remarkable how much we can recreate on a bare stage,” he says, “It’s up to Daniel and myself to paint the picture.”

Waters played the role 18 years ago and while he didn’t remember the lines, he certainly remembered the experience. It takes it out of an actor, he reports.

“The audiences’ emotions are very palpable. This is true horror. This does something on stage which is normally only achieved in movies,” he says.

The Woman in Black, Canberra Theatre, July 9-14.