The Enfield Haunting, Ambassadors Theatre

Quite what happened at 284 Green Street, Enfield between 1977 and 1979 has never been fully ascertained and still haunts the zeitgeist. As well as a Apple TV documentary this year and The Conjuring 2 (a $40m Hollywood movie which borrowed the premise), the apparent poltergeist experienced in that North London council home has inspired this rather leaden production from Paul Unwin (co-founder of Casualty) featuring TV stars Catherine Tate (Doctor Who) and David Threlfall (Shameless).

Peggy (Tate)’s household has been turned upside down, firstly by the supposedly unearthly happenings and later by investigators. One of them, inventor Maurice Gross (Threlfall) has practically set up shop and is coming round on his nights with an agenda. Peggy’s youngest daughter Janet (a marvellously malevolent Ella Schrey-Yeats) shows signs of possession from an older man, growling into Gross’ mics and being caught in midair by his cameras. Elder sister (Grace Molony) confesses to making up some of the paranormal activity but Unwin leaves us in no doubt that there is something spooky going on here…

The online buzz hasn’t been kind in the lead up to its West End debut and, possibly in response, the running time has been shortened to a zippy 75 minutes. Frankly, it could have been shortened to 15 minutes for all the difference it makes: Tate isn’t great, Threlfall isn’t awful, the set from Lee Newby is fantastically evocative of Seventies London both in the minor details and its general grimy mood and the jump-scare illusions from Paul Knieve (Groundhog Day, Matilda) are far more effective than anything seen in Danny Robins’ 2.22 A Ghost Story.

As someone who grew up close to Green Street in the 1970s, I may be slightly biased. I went in expecting the accents to be all over the place but was pleasantly surprised. Tate still enunciates like her more famous “Donna-from-Chiswick” character who travels through time and space but Molony and Schrey-Yeats both sound like they are from “London’s Top Borough”. Unwin constantly makes out that nothing unusual happens in Enfield when it was (at the time) a history-making hub of manufacturing and technology: 1967 saw the first ever mass-manufactured colour TVs roll off the same assembly lines my father worked on at Ferguson’s and, down the road at Enfield Town branch of Barclays Bank, On The Buses’ Reg Varney opened the world’s first ATM.

Contrary to online assertions otherwise, this won’t be the worst play this year - it’s not even the worst play opening this week - but Unwin doesn’t exactly do justice to arguably the greatest ghost story of modern times. He has a tin ear for how Northern Londoners speak, and fails when he tries to crowbar in socio-commentary subplots using the undeveloped devices of an inquisitive neighbour and a violent husband. The scariest thing about The Enfield Haunting is that someone thinks that a script this flat and an actress with Tate’s so-so stage talents deserve West End space, even in the traditional down season between Christmas and the first half-term of the year.