In One Ear, A Ghost in Your Ear Whispers on Minetta Lane

Minetta Lane is a short, crooked block between Sixth Avenue and MacDougal Street. Inside the theater on it, everyone is wearing headphones. Then someone starts to whisper, and each person in the room is sure the whisper is meant for them alone.

A Ghost in Your Ear opened on Wednesday, October 14, at Audible's Minetta Lane Theatre. It runs 90 minutes, according to Frank Scheck of New York Stage Review. The run has already been extended twice and now plays through Saturday, December 12, which Broadway.com reports is final.

It is a ghost story told in the dark, in October, to a neighborhood that stays out late. The timing is not an accident.

The Setup

Jamie Armitage, a Tony nominee for Six, wrote and directed the play. It comes to New York after a sold-out run at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs in London.

The frame is a recording session. Owen Campbell plays Sid, the sound engineer. Lucas Iverson plays Lucas, an actor hired to read a ghost story for an audiobook. The story he reads follows a man who travels to a remote village in the far north of England to clear out the house of his father, a hermit he had not spoken to in decades. On his first night there, he senses he is not alone. Soon the studio is not behaving either.

The role was not always Iverson's. TheaterMania's Zachary Stewart writes that the originally announced Harry Richardson left the production and Iverson took the part only about three weeks before the review ran. The character's name changed with him, from Richard to Lucas. Iverson is best known on screen for The Pitt, and this is his first show Off-Broadway. Campbell has the harder job. Wilson, in Talkin' Broadway, calls Sid "the rather thankless role," the straight man who keeps the tape rolling while the room goes strange around him.

The audience hears all of it through individual headphones. Ben and Max Ringham, the sound designers, use binaural audio, recorded and mixed to mimic how two human ears hear a room, so a voice can seem to move behind your head or lean in close. Anisha Fields designed the set and costumes, and Ben Jacobs the lighting.

What the Critics Heard

The critics agree on the effect more than on the story. BroadwayWorld's roundup of the notices gives the show an average rating of 72.9 percent.

Stewart calls it "a nifty little thriller just in time for Halloween" and the lead turn "an incredible off-Broadway debut." His complaint is that the play explains too much as it nears its end.

"A yummy piece of Halloween candy." Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review, as quoted in BroadwayWorld's roundup

Sommers gives it four stars out of five. His colleague Scheck gives it three. Scheck finds the show more impressive technically than in its ideas, calls the ghost story and its frame thinly conceived, and says the slow burn makes 90 minutes feel longer.

Austin Fimmano of New York Theatre Guide writes that the binaural design "gives you goosebumps." Juan A. Ramirez of Theatrely wanted more frights. He says he could count the real scares "on exactly one hand." Mike Dressel of Slant hears a debt to The Woman in Black. James Wilson of Talkin' Broadway praises "the sensational Off-Broadway debut by Iverson."

What to Know Before You Go

The Minetta Lane Theatre is at 18 Minetta Lane in Greenwich Village, a short walk from the West 4th Street subway station. Time Out's listing shows evening shows at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, Saturday shows at 5 and 9 p.m., and a Sunday matinee at 3 p.m. Prices vary by night, so check Audible's listing for the current schedule and seats.

The 9 p.m. Saturday show is the one to book if you want the full effect. You walk out near 10:30, into the Village, with the voice still in your head.

Ghost stories are having a season downtown. A few blocks west, a West End haunting moves into the Lortel on Christopher Street.

The scariest voice in the show is the quietest one. By the time you notice it, it is already in your ear.