Thursday 14th May, 2026
Ghost Stories, the long-running play from writing duo Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, was hugely successful, touring nationwide and eventually being adapted for the big screen. The Psychic, the long-awaited follow-up currently playing at the York Theatre Royal, explores some of the same supernatural territory, the main difference being that while Ghost Stories was made up of three tales of terror, The Psychic is one single narrative…
Sheila Gold (Eileen Welsh) is a disgraced TV psychic desperately trying to claw back some of the money she lost in a high-profile court case. When Tara (Megan Placinto), her niece, shows up out of the blue and asks to be taught how to be a psychic herself, Sheila is initially sceptical. Eventually, the pair become close, however. When Deepak (Jaz Singh Deol) and Nisha (Nikhita Lesler), a young couple mourning the death of their daughter, offer Sheila a huge amount of money to reconnect them with their daughter, the titular psychic is only too happy to oblige them. Elsewhere, Sheila’s acerbic mother, Rosa (Frances Barber), looms large over everything despite only really appearing in the second half of the play.
As with Ghost Stories, Dyson and Nyman are incredibly adept at using sound and set design to create an ominous atmosphere. A flickering candle here, a ringing bell there – while it’s stuff we’ve seen before, it’s still chillingly effective. Perhaps most unsettling are the loud bursts of animalistic roaring that regularly punctuate the action to signal the onset of some kind of supernatural occurrence. Indeed, one of the play’s great strengths is that neither we, nor the characters, are ever fully sure about what is supernatural and wasn’t – just like in an actual seance.
Featuring a string of top performances across the board, most emphatically from Welsh, who is excellent throughout, The Psychic is a metacommentary on the insidiousness of those who purport to speak to the dead as well as a typically intricate and compelling narrative from two writers who have proven themselves to be at the very forefront of horror theatre. While the ending is a little abrupt, and the scares don’t come quite as thick and fast as in Ghost Stories, The Psychic is still a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I loved it.
